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The 
egregious  english 


BY 

ANGUS  McNElLL 


)»        '  ■>  ^    }  .  y   }      ■>    i  J      > 


New  York  :  G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

London:  GRANT  RICHARDS 

1903 


1> 


v^ 


Copyright,  igo2,  by 

ANGUS  McNeill 

Published,  January,  1903 


C  «     (     C  t 


Ube  TRnicherbocfeer  pvcest  flew  JJotli 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

I. — Apollo     .... 

PAGE 
I 

IL- 

—The  Sportsman 

-             13 

IIL- 

—The  Man  of  Business    . 

20 

IV.- 

—The  Journalist 

.             28 

V.- 

—The  Employed  Person    . 

•       37 

VL- 

—Chiffon    .... 

•       47 

VII.- 

—The  Soldier    . 

•       59 

VIII.- 

—The  Navy 

•       71 

IX.- 

—The  Churches 

■       79 

X.- 

—The  Politician 

.       90 

XI.- 

—Poets        .... 

.     103 

XII.- 

—Fiction     .... 

■     113 

XIII.- 

— SUBURBANISM      . 

.     124 

XIV.- 

—The  Man-about-Town     . 

•     137 

XV.- 

—Drink       .... 

144 

XVI.- 

—Food         .... 

153 

XVIL- 

—Law  and  Order 

163 

XVIII.- 

—Education 

171 

XIX.- 

—Recreation      .         .        .         , 

183 

XX.- 

—Stock  Exchange 

192 

XXI.- 

—The  Beloved  .         .         .         . 

199 

m 


414595 


The  Egregious  English 


CHAPTER  I 

APOLLO 

It  has  become  the  EngHshman's  habit,  one 
might  almost  say  the  EngHshman's  instinct, 
to  take  himself  for  the  head  and  front  of  the 
imiverse.  The  order  of  creation  began,  we 
are  told,  in  protoplasm.  It  has  achieved  at 
length  the  Englishman.  Herein  are  the  cul- 
mination and  ultimate  glory  of  evolutionary 
processes.  Nature,  like  the  seventh-stand- 
ard boy  in  a  board  school,  "can  get  no 
higher."  She  has  made  the  Englishman, 
and  her  work  therefore  is  done.  For  the 
continued  progress  of  the  world  and  all  that 
in    it   is,    the   Englishman  will    make  due 


5  The  Egregious  English 

provision.  He  knows  exactly  what  is  wanted, 
and  by  himself  it  shall  be  supplied.  There 
is  little  that  can  be  considered  distinguish- 
ingly  English  which  does  not  reflect  this 
point  of  view.  As  an  easy-going,  entirely 
confident,  imperturbable  piece  of  arrogance, 
the  Englishman  has  certainly  no  mammal- 
ian compeer.  Even  in  the  blackest  of  his 
troubles  he  perceives  that  he  is  great.  "I 
L^  shall  muddle  through,"  he  says.     He  is  ex- 

pected and  understood  to  muddle  through; 
and,  muddle  through  or  not,  he  invariably 
believes  he  has  done  it.  Sheer  complacency 
bolsters  him  up  on  every  hand.  At  his  going 
forth  the  rest  of  the  world  is  fain  to  abase 
itself  in  the  dust.  He  is  the  strong  man,  the 
white  man  of  white  men.  He  is  the  rich, 
clean  sportsman,  the  incomparable,  the  fear- 
less, the  intolerable.  And  by  *'  Englishman  " 
the  world  has  learned  not  to  mean  ''  Briton." 
The  world  has  been  taught  to  discriminate. 
It  has  regarded  the  Britannic  brotherhood; 
and  though  it  forgets  that  the  Gael  and  the 
Celt  are  Britons,  it  takes  its  Englishman  for 


Apollo  3 

a  Briton,  only  with  a  difference.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  keenly  sensible  of  sundry 
facts — as  that  it  is  the  Englishman  who  rules 
the  waves  and  the  Englishman  upon  whose 
dominions  the  sun  never  sets ;  that  the  British 
flag  is  the  English  flag,  the  British  army  the 
EngHsh  army,  and  the  British  navy  the  Eng- 
lish navy,  and  that  Scotland  and  Ireland, 
with  Wales,  are  English  appanages.  It 
would  be  foolish  to  assert  that  the  English- 
man has  greatly  concerned  himself  in  either 
the  promulgation  or  the  acceptance  of  these 
notions.  But  he  holds  them  dear,  and  they 
are  ineradicably  planted  in  his  subconscious- 
ness. 

One  is  inclined  to  think,  however,  that, 
while  the  supremacy  and  superiority  of  the 
Englishman  have  been  received  without  tra- 
verse in  his  own  dominions,  there  are  those 
in  outer  darkness — on  the  Continent,  in  Ire- 
land, and  even  in  Scotland — who  admit  no 
such  supremacy  and  no  such  superiority. 
Nay,  there  be  persons  breathing  the  breath 
of  life  who,  so  far  from  looking  upon  the 


4  The  Egregious  English 

Englishman  with  the  eyes  with  which  the 
early  savage  must  have  regarded  Captain 
Cook,  look  upon  him  with  the  eyes  with  which 
Captain  Cook  regarded  the  early  savage.  In 
Ireland,  particularly,  hatred  of  the  English 
has  become  a  deep-grounded  national  charac- 
teristic. The  French  dislike  of  perfidious  Al- 
bion may  be  reckoned  to  a  great  extent  an 
intermittent  matter.  It  sputters  and  flares 
when  a  Fashoda  or  a  Boer  War  comes  along, 
and  it  has  a  way  of  finding  its  deadliest  ex- 
pression in  caricature.  But  the  Irish  hatred 
is  as  persistent  and  concrete  as  it  is  ancient. 
In  Scotland  the  feeling  about  the  English 
amounts  in  the  main  to  good-humoured  tol- 
erance, touched  with  a  certain  amazement. 
The  least  cultivated  of  Scotsmen — and  such 
a  man  is  quite  a  different  being  from  the 
least  cultivated  of  Englishmen — ^will  tell  you 
that  "thae  English"  are  chiefly  notable  by 
reason  of  their  profound  ignorance  and  a 
ridiculous  passion  for  the  dissipation  of 
money.  The  Scot  of  the  middle  class  thinks 
his  neighbour  is  a  feckless,  foolish  person 


Apollo  5 

who  would  pass  muster  if  he  could  be  serious, 
and  who  has  got  what  he  possesses  by  good 
luck  rather  than  by  good  management.     Up 
to  a  point  both  are  right,  for  the  English  in 
the  mass  are  at  once  much  more  ignorant  and 
much  less  thrifty  than  the  people  of  Scot- 
land, and  their  good-nature  and  happy-go- 
luckiness  are  things  to  set  a  Scot  moralising. 
Years  ago  Matthew  Arnold  put  the  right 
names   on    the   two    more   creditable    and 
powerful  sections  of  EngHsh  society.     The 
aristocracy  he  set  down  for  Barbarians,  the 
middle  class  for   PhiHstines.      The  aristo- 
cracy were  inaccessible  to  ideas,  he  said ;  the 
middle  class  admired  and  loved  the  aristo- 
cracy.    It  is  so  to  this  day,  and  so  to  an 
extent  which  is  in  entire  consonance  with  the 
circumstance  that  for  sheer  stupidity  the  Eng- 
lishman of  the  upper  class  is  without  parallel, 
while  the  Englishman  of  the  middle  class  can- 
not be  paralleled  for  snobbishness.    Arnold's 
complaint  that  neither  class  was  a  reading 
class  or  at  all  devoted  to  the  higher  matters 
still    holds.     The   great,    broad-shouldered, 


6  The  Egregious  English 

genial  Englishman  whom  Tennyson  sang 
and  at  whom  Arnold  gibed  is  still  with  us. 
That  he  is  as  great  and  as  broad-shoul- 
dered and  as  genial  as  ever  nobody  will  deny. 
And,  broadly  speaking,  his  outlook  upon  life 
remains  exactly  what  it  was.  To  be  ruddy 
and  healthy,  to  go  out  mornings  with  dogs, 
to  dine  hilariously  and  dance  evenings, 
to  be  generous  to  the  poor,  and  to  hon- 
our oneself  and  the  King  are  the  rule  of  his 
life  if  he  be  a  Barbarian ;  and  to  ape  these 
things  and  consider  them  gifts  of  price,  if  he 
be  a  Philistine.  Since  Arnold,  however,  the 
Englishman,  egregious  though  he  undoubt- 
edly was,  has  taken  unto  himself  a  new  and 
altogether  alarming  demerit.  Out  of  his  love 
of  health  and  ease  and  security  and  pleasure 
and  well-ordered  materialism  there  has  sprung 
up  a  trouble  which  is  like  to  cost  him  exceed- 
ing dear — a  trouble,  in  fact,  which,  if  he  be 
not  careful,  will  go  far  to  emasculate  him,  if 
not  wholly  to  destroy  him.  Of  the  higher 
matters,  as  has  been  said,  he  has  taken  but 
the  smallest  heed.     Writer  fellows,  painter 


Apollo  7 

fellows,  philosopher  Johnnies,  and  so  forth  are 
not  of  his  world,  except  in  so  far  as  they  may- 
entertain  his  women-folk,  or  deck  his  halls 
with  commercial  canvas,  or  assist  him  in  the 
eking  out  of  his  small  talk  before  dessert.     It 
is  not  to  be  expected  of  him  that  he  should 
take  to  his  heart  persons  whom  he  cannot  by 
any  possibility  imderstand.     Even  Arnold 
could  forgive  him  that  failing.     It  was  the 
build  of  the  man,  the  breed  and  constitu- 
tion of  him,  that  justified  him.     But  since, 
being  English,  he  has  foimd  his  way  to  the 
unpardonable    sin.     It    was    well    that    he 
should  despise  persons  who,  however  much 
they  might  think,  did  little  and  got  little  for 
doing  it.     It  was  well  that  brains  which 
could  not  sit  a  horse,  and  preferred  bed  to 
the  moors,  and  had  no  rent-roll,  should  be 
despised.     It  would  have  been  well,  too,  if 
that  other  kind  of  brains,  which,  beginning 
with  nothing,   ends  in  millionairedom  and 
flagrant  barbarianism,  might  also  have  con- 
tinued to  be  despised  and  to  be  kept  at  arm's- 
length.     The  great,  broad-shouldered,  genial 


L'- 


8  The  Egregious  English 

Englishman,  however,  has  succumbed.  Park 
Lane  has  become  a  Ghetto ;  my  lord's  house 
parties  reek  of  gentlemen  with  noses,  and 
names  ending  in  ''baum";  and  the  English 
Houses  of  Parliament,  the  finest  club  in 
Europe,  the  mother  of  parliaments,  the  most 
dignified  assemblage  under  the  sun,  is  just  a 
branch  of  the  Stock  Exchange.  As  the  ex- 
ceedingly clever  young  man  who  recently 
wrote  a  book  about  the  Scot  might  say,  this 
shows  what  the  English  really  are. 

It  has  been  remarked,  and  possibly  not 
without  truth,  that  the  Scot  keeps  the  Sab- 
bath and  everything  else  he  can  lay  his  hands 
upon.  He  is  credited  with  being  the  per- 
fect money-grubber;  his  desire  for  compe- 
tence, we  have  been  told  by  the  clever  young 
man  before  mentioned,  has  blighted  his  soul 
and  brought  him  into  opprobrium  among 
Turks  and  Chinamen.  Well,  the  Scot  does 
look  after  money:  he  desires  competence,  he 
loves  independence;  and,  when  he  can  get 
them,  ease  and  pleasure  are  gratifying  to 
him.     If   he    comes   off  the   rock   and   at- 


Apollo  9 

tains  affluence,  he  is  not  averse  to  the 
goodnesses  that  affluence  commands.  He 
will  start  a  castle  and  a  carriage  and  a 
coat-of-arms  with  the  best  of  them ;  he  will 
lift  up  his  family  and  leave  his  children 
well  provided  for.  In  these  connections  he 
is  just  as  human  as  the  next  man;  but  he 
never  has  played  and  he  never  will  play  the 
English  game  of  lavishness  and  wastefulness 
and  swaggering  profusion,  and,  least  of  all, 
will  he  play  it  on  a  basis  of  undesirable  asso- 
ciation. The  Scotsman  who  has  compassed 
wealth,  even  though  he  be  the  son  of  a  mole- 
catcher  or  a  sweetie- wife  or  a  Glasgow  beer- 
seller,  can  always  remember  that  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  spiritual  integrity.  And 
though  he  may  or  may  not  boo  and  boo  and 
boo  in  accordance  with  the  good  old  kindly 
English  legend,  he  certainly  will  not  do  it  in 
Jews'  houses.  This,  I  take  it,  is  where  he 
has  some  little  advantage  over  Englishmen. 
Perhaps  no  finer  indication  of  the  English 
spirit,  and  of  the  greed  and  corruption  that 
have  overtaken  it,  could  have  been  offered 


lo         The  Egregious  English 

than  has  been  offered  by  the  trend  of  recent 
events  in  South  Africa.  To  go  thoroughly- 
over  the  ground  in  such  an  essay  as  the 
present  is,  of  course,  impossible ;  to  state  the 
arguments  for  both  sides  would  be  to  repro- 
duce writing  of  which  everybody  is  heartily 
tired.  The  battling  newspapers  have  said 
their  say,  and  we  are  just  beginning  to  feel 
the  comfort  of  a  more  or  less  reasonable 
settlement.  All  that  need  be  said  here  is 
that  the  Englishman  has  not  come  out  of 
this  war  with  anything  like  the  honour  and 
the  glory  and  the  eclat  that  he  has  been  ac- 
customed to  expect  of  himself  in  similar 
undertakings.  His  bodily  prowess,  his  hardi- 
hood, his  Spartan  capacity  for  withstanding 
the  rigours  of  campaigning,  his  military  abil- 
ities, and  his  very  patriotism  have  all  had  to 
be  called  in  question  during  the  past  two  and 
a  half  years.  When  he  went  out  to  the  fray, 
his  cry  was,  "  Ha!  ha!"  and  the  war  was  to 
be  over  in  six  weeks.  He  had  the  finest 
equipment,  the  finest  munitions,  the  finest 
men,  the  finest  system,  the  world  had  seen. 


Apollo  1 1 

He  was  as  fit  as  a  fiddle  and  as  hard  as  nails, 
and  his  love  of  music  prompted  him  to  take 
a  piano  with  him.  Then  the  English  and 
they  that  dwell  in  outer  darkness  saw  many- 
things.  They  have  been  learning  their  les- 
son ever  since.  They  have  learned  that  in 
a  fight  the  great,  broad-shouldered,  genial 
Englishman,  instead  of  being  worth  three 
Frenchmen,  is  worth  about  the  fiftieth  part 
of  a  Boer  farmer.  They  have  learned  that  the 
great,  broad-shouldered,  genial  Englishman 
is  not  above  selling  spavined  horses  and 
stinking  beef  to  the  country  that  he  loves. 
And  they  have  learned  that  when  a  great, 
broad-shouldered,  genial  Englishman  is  dis- 
covered in  his  incompetence  or  his  culpable 
negligence  or  his  dishonour,  it  is  the  business 
of  all  the  other  great,  broad-shouldered,  gen- 
ial Englishmen  to  get  round  him  and  screen 
him  from  the  public  gaze  and  swear  that  he 
is  a  maligned  and  misimderstood  man.  The 
incidents  of  the  war  alone,  without  any  back- 
ing or  the  smallest  distortion  or  exaggera- 
tion, have  been  quite  sufficient  to  show  that 


12         The  Egregious  English 

there  is  something  rotten  in  the  condition  of 
the  English.  It  has  been  a  tale  of  shame 
and  ignominy  and  disaster  from  beginning  to 
end.  It  has  resulted  in  a  peace  which  prac- 
tically settles  very  little,  and  an  inquiry  with 
closed  doors.  Verily  Apollo  must  have  a 
care  for  his  reputation  in  the  Pantheon. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   SPORTSMAN 

The  Englishman  who  is  not  a  sportsman 
dares  not  mention  the  circumstance.  In  the 
counties  he  must  shoot  and  hunt,  or  be  for 
ever  damned.  In  the  towns  he  must  have 
daily  dealings  with  a  starting-price  book- 
maker and  hourly  news  from  the  race-courses 
and  the  cricket-pitches,  otherwise  English- 
men decline  to  know  him.  "  I  am  a  sports- 
man, sir,"  is  the  English  shibboleth.  "It  is 
the  English  love  of  manly  sports  that  has 
made  the  English  paramount  in  every  land 
and  on  every  sea."  The  Lord  Chief  Justice 
of  England  rowed  stroke  for  his  college  in 
Oxford  V.  Cambridge  in  1815,  otherwise  he 
would  not  be  Lord  Chief  Justice  of  England. 
At  eighteen  the  Lord  Chancellor  was  one  of 
13 


1 4         The  Egregious  English 

the  best  sprinters  of  his  day,  otherwise  he 
would  never  have  dandled  his  little  legs  on 
the  Woolsack.  Sir  Henry  Campbell-Banner- 
man  is  a  keen  shot,  and  was  one  of  a  party 
of  seven  who  made  the  biggest  bag  on  record 
in  1865,  otherwise  he  would  never  have  been 
Leader  of  the  Opposition.  Mr.  Henry  La- 
bouchere  is  one  of  our  most  brilliant  and 
daring  steeple-chase  riders,  otherwise  he 
would  never  have  owned  Truth.  Mrs.  Or- 
miston  Chant  is  a  cricket  enthusiast ;  so  are 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  Mr.  Joseph 
Chamberlain,  and  Mr.  Tommy  Bowles.  Lord 
Roberts  can  take  a  hand  at  croquet  with  the 
best  young  woman  out  of  Girton,  and  Mr. 
John  Morley  understands  a  race-horse  almost 
as  well  as  he  tmderstands  the  Encyclopasdists. 
In  fact,  the  English  eminent  are  either  sports- 
men or  nothing,  and  all  the  other  English 
follow  suit. 

Now  and  again  somebody  gets  up  and 
points  out  that  betting  is  a  great  evil ;  where- 
upon the  Duke  of  Devonshire  opens  one  eye 
and  says  that  he  never  had  a  shilling  on 


The  Sportsman  15 

a  horse  in  his  Hfe.  Then  everybody  says 
that  horse-racing  is  good  for  the  breed  of 
horses,  employing  large  amounts  of  capital 
and  large  numbers  of  honest  persons,  and  on 
the  whole  a  manly  and  profitable  pastime. 
Incidentally,  too,  it  transpires  that  fox- 
hunting is  an  equally  noble  and  English 
form  of  sport,  and  that  when  farmers  cease 
from  puppy-walking,  Britain  may  very  well 
drop  the  epithet  "Great"  from  her  name. 
Or  perhaps  Mr.  Kipling,  fresh  from  the  un- 
pleasant truths  of  South  Africa,  conceives  a 
distich  or  two  as  to  flannelled  fools  and  mud- 
died oafs.  In  response  there  is  an  immediate 
and  emphatic  English  howl.  Why  cannot 
the  little  man  stick  to  his  Recessionals?  How 
dare  he  call  sportsmen  like  Ranji  and  Trott 
and  Bloggs  and  Biffkin  flannelled  fools,  much 
less  the  Tottenham  Hotspurs  and  Sheffield 
United  muddied  oafs !  Is  it  not  true  that  the 
battle  of  Waterloo  was  won  on  the  playing- 
fields  of  Eton  ?  Were  not  flannelled  fools  and 
muddied  oafs  among  the  first  to  throw  up 
their  home  ties  and  fling  themselves  into  the 


1 6        The  Egregious  English 

imminent  breach  when  the  war  broke  out? 
Are  not  cricket  and  football  healthy  and  ad- 
mirable old  English  sports,  and  pleasantly 
calculated  to  keep  the  youth  of  the  country 
out  of  much  worse  mischief  on  Saturday 
afternoons?  And  so  on  right  down  the  line. 
The  English  are  sportsmen.  Sport  is  bred 
in  the  bone  of  them.  Less  than  a  century 
ago  they  were  cock-fighting  and  man-fighting 
in  the  splendid  English  way.  They  would 
be  doing  it  yet,  if  their  own  stupid  laws  did 
not  prevent  them.  Instead  they  race  horses 
and  pursue  the  fox,  watch  cricket  and  foot- 
ball matches,  and  play  tennis  and  croquet 
and  ping-pong.  It  is  sport  that  keeps  Eng- 
land sweet.  If  it  were  not  for  sport,  the 
English  would  cease  to  have  red  faces  and 
husky  voices  and  check  suits.  One  pre- 
sumes, too,  that  if  it  were  not  for  sport  they 
would  entirely  lose  their  sense  of  fair  play, 
their  love  of  honest  dealing,  and  that  spirit 
of  self-sacrifice  which  notoriously  informs  all 
their  actions.  It  is  sport  that  has  made  the 
English  the  justest  as  well  as  the  greatest  of 


The  Sportsman  17 

the  nations.  It  is  sport  which  keeps  her  un- 
spotted of  the  lower  vices,  such  as  drunken- 
ness, indolence,  and  misspent  Saturday  after- 
noons. It  is  sport  which  gives  her  a  standard 
of  manliness,  an  all-day  press,  and  a  platform 
upon  which  prince  and  pauper,  the  highest 
and  the  lowest,  meet  as  common  men.  Long 
live  sport! 

Perhaps  it  is  pardonable  in  a  Scot  to  note 
that  the  only  forms  of  sport  which  can  be 
pronounced  sane  and  devoid  of  offence  came 
out  of  Scotland.  The  grand  instance  in 
point,  of  course,  is  the  ancient  and  royal 
game  of  golf.  Without  attempting  to  say  a 
word  that  would  tend  to  exaggerate  the 
value  of  a  pastime  which  is  beloved  by  all 
Scotsmen,  and  not  without  its  appreciators 
even  in  England,  it  seems  fitting  to  remark 
that  in  golf  you  have  a  game  which,  while 
every  whit  as  healthy,  as  manly,  and  as  in- 
vigorating as  horse-racing,  cricket,  football, 
and  the  rest  of  them,  can  never  by  'any 
chance  become  the  mere  kill-time  of  the  idle, 
unparticipating  spectator  or  the  prey  of  the 


1 8        The  Egregious  English 

"  professional,"  the  ready-money  bookmaker, 
and  the  halfpenny  journal.  As  to  other 
Scottish  sports,  one  need  not  here  particu- 
larise ;  but  they  are  all  healthy  and  honest  in 
the  broadest  sense,  and  with  the  single  excep- 
tion of  football,  which  has  been  corrupted  by 
the  English,  they  have  not  been  allowed  to 
deteriorate  into  vices.  The  exploitation  of 
popular  pastimes  by  covetous  and  unprin- 
cipled persons  is  an  unmistakable  sign  of 
national  decadence.  In  England  that  ex- 
ploitation goes  on  without  let  or  hindrance 
and  in  almost  every  department.  Protest 
brings  merely  contempt  and  objurgation 
upon  the  head  of  the  protester,  and  the  na- 
tional virility  continues  to  be  slowly  but 
surely  sapped  away.  That  the  English  no- 
tion of  sport  should  permit  of  the  orgies 
of  bloodshed,  rowdyism,  and  partisanship 
which  take  place  in  the  coverts  and  on  foot- 
ball-fields, race-courses,  and  cricket-grounds 
serves  to  indicate  that,  in  spite  of  all  that 
has  been  said  and  sung  in  its  praises,  the 
English  notion  of  sport  is  an  exceedingly  sad 


The  Sportsman  19 

and  sorry  one.  It  is  natural  that  a  people 
given  over  to  display  and  the  getting  of 
money  for  the  sake  of  the  more  unnecessary 
luxuries  money  can  buy  should  in  a  great 
measure  lose  its  taste  for  outdoor  sports  of 
the  primal  order.  The  English  are  losing 
that  taste  at  a  rate  which  can  leave  no  doubt 
as  to  the  ultimate  upshot.  In  brief,  the  Eng- 
lishman as  sportsman  worth  the  name  seems 
to  be  disappearing ;  and  in  his  place  England 
will  have  the  adipose,  plethoric,  mechanical 
slayer  of  birds  who  goes  to  his  shoot  in  a 
bath-chair,  and  the  cadaverous,  undersized, 
Saturday-afternoon  zealot,  the  chief  joys  of 
whose  existence  are  the  cracking  of  filberts 
and  the  kicking  of  umpires. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   MAN    OF    BUSINESS 

The  English,  all  the  world  has  heard, 
are  a  nation  of  shopkeepers.  They  are  un- 
derstood to  keep  shop  and  to  glory  in  it. 
They  have  kept  shop,  with  the  other  na- 
tions for  customers,  ever  since  international 
shopkeeping  became  a  possibility.  In  the 
beginning,  one  is  afraid,  their  notion  of 
shopkeeping  ran  neither  to  fair  trade  nor 
honest  dealing ;  but  gradually  there  was  built 
up  a  system  of  commercial  equity,  the  main 
principle  of  which  was  the  protection  of  one 
shopkeeper  against  another  and  the  security 
of  shopkeepers  generally. 

In  course  of  time  the  English  man  of 
business  arose.  He  had  a  silk  hat  and  ex- 
pansive   manners.     He  lived  in   a    suburb 

20 


The  Man  of  Business  21 

and  read  the  Times  on  his  way  to  busi- 
ness in  the  morning.  All  day  at  his  office 
he  would  cheat  no  man,  and  his  word  was 
as  good  as  his  bond.  His  office  day  was 
a  day  of  quite  ten  hours,  and  during  those 
ten  hours  he  sweated  like  the  proverbial 
nigger.  At  nights  he  retired  to  his  suburb, 
and,  with  the  wife  and  children  whom  he 
kept  there,  ate  to  repletion  from  the  joint, 
washed  it  down  with  sherry  and  port  sup- 
plied to  him  by  merchants  of  the  type  of  the 
late  Mr.  Ruskin's  father;  and,  hey,  presto! 
by  eleven  of  the  clock  he  was  deep  among  the 
feathers.  Twice  on  Sundays  he  went  to 
church  and  held  the  plate.  To  Sunday's 
midday  dinner  he  invited  the  vicar  or  a 
curate,  and  there  was  always  beef  and  batter- 
pudding  and  improving  talk,  not  to  mention 
cabbage  and  an  extra  special  ''glass  of  wine, 
sir."  Other  recreations  the  English  man  of 
business  had  none,  save  and  except  perhaps 
an  occasional  Saturday-afternoon  drive  in  a 
hired  chaise  with  Mrs.  Man-of-Business  and 
the  children,  and  a  still  more  occasional  visit 


22        The  Egregious  English 

to  the  theatre.  In  the  long  run,  by  the 
practice  of  these  virtues  he  amassed  wealth. 
He  put  his  money  into  good  bottoms;  he 
owed  no  man  a  penny;  and  as  he  never 
robbed  anybody  and  always  lived  miles 
within  his  income,  he  had  a  conscience  so 
easy  that  it  seemed  to  sleep.  Everybody 
respected  him.  He  was  in  demand  to  take 
the  chair  at  the  meetings  of  young  men's 
improvement  societies,  and  to  explain  the 
secret  of  his  success  "free,  gratis,  and  for 
nothing"  to  the  callow  young  men  thereat 
assembled.  He  would  tell  you  unctuously 
that  he  attributed  his  success  (i)  to  early 
rising,  (2)  to  never  wasting  time  [the  split 
infinitive  was  his],  (3)  to  always  saving  at 
least  one  third  of  his  income,  (4)  to  never 
going  bond  for  anybody,  and  (5)  to  marrying 
Mrs.  Man-of-Business — this  last,  of  course, 
with  a  chortle.  So  he  wagged  along  and 
helped  to  build  up  the  commercial  greatness 
and  probity  and  honour  of  his  country.  And 
when  he  died  he  had  a  magnificent  and  costly 
funeral  and  was  attended  to  his  last  long 


The  Man  of  Business  23 

home  by  his  weeping  relict  and  sorrowing 
sons  and  daughters.  Next  day  there  was  an 
account  of  Mr.  Man-of-Business's  obsequies 
in  the  local  papers,  and  his  sons  proceeded  to 
carry  on  the  concern. 

That  was  forty  years  ago.  To-day  the 
EngHsh  man  of  business  is  a  bird  of  an  en- 
tirely different  and  altogether  more  entranc- 
ing feather.  Indeed,  it  is  a  question  whether 
he  has  not  ceased  to  be  a  man  of  business  at 
all.  One  might  perhaps  sum  him  up  best  by 
saying  that  he  has  begun  to  have  notions. 
Whereas  he  was  once  the  bulwark  of  the 
Philistine  class,  he  has  now  gone  over,  lock, 
stock,  and  barrel — particularly  barrel — to 
the  Barbarians.  He  lives  in  the  manner, 
style,  and  odour  of  Barbarism ;  and  the  ruling 
ambition  of  his  existence  is  to  pass  for  a 
"county  magnate,"  a  man  of  birth  and  leis- 
ure, rather  than  for  a  man  of  business.  So 
that  he  has  entirely  laid  aside  the  character- 
istics which  distinguished  his  early  and  mid- 
dle Victorian  prototype.  Breadth,  girth, 
weight,  the  substantial,  the  ponderous,  are 


24        The  Egregious  English 

not  for  him.  He  does  not  attribute  his  suc- 
cess to  eariy  rising;  he  does  not  boast  that 
his  word  is  his  bond;  he  does  not  slap  his 
sides  when  he  laughs ;  he  never  went  to  busi- 
ness on  a  tram-car  in  his  life ;  and  as  for  his 
owing  all  he  is  to  Mrs.  Man-of-Business,  it  is 
to  his  association  with  that  charming  be- 
chiffoned,  bejewelled  little  lady  that  he  owes 
all  he  owes.  In  other  words,  the  new  Eng- 
lish man  of  business  has  made  up  his  mind 
that,  if  life  is  to  be  made  tolerable  at  all,  it 
must  be  made  tolerable  through  social  ways. 
That  is  to  say,  if  one's  income  nms  to  a  couple 
of  thousand  a  year  out  of  a  butter  business, 
one  must  live  in  precisely  the  manner  of  per- 
sons whose  incomes  nm  to  two  thousand  a 
year  out  of  lands  and  hereditaments.  "The 
glass  of  fashion  and  the  mould  of  form' '  for  a 
person  who  would  live  is  Mayfair.  Lords 
and  dukes  and  the  landed  gentry  have 
houses  in  Mayfair;  their  wives  and  female 
relatives  flutter  round  in  flashing  equipages 
and  brilliant  toilettes;  there  is  the  theatre, 
the  opera,  and  other  people's  houses  in  the 


The  Man  of  Business  25 

evening,  the  Park  on  Sundays,  the  river  in  the 
summer,  Scotland  in  the  autumn,  and  the 
Riviera  for  the  winter  and  early  spring. 
Lords  and  dukes  and  the  landed  gentry  tread 
this  pretty  round,  and  find  both  pleasure  and 
dignity  in  it.  Why  not  the  head  of  the  old- 
established  firm  of  Margarine,  Sons,  Bros. 
&  Co.?  Why  not,  indeed?  Old  Margarine, 
foimder  of  the  house,  never  missed  a  day  at 
the  office  for  forty  years.  Young  Margarine 
will  tell  you  that,  "  after  all,  you  know,  it  is 
rather  amusing  to  drop  into  the  office  some- 
times and  see  the  fellows  sit  up."  All  the 
same,  the  business  is  a  beastly  bore,  and 
there  are  moments  when  he  wishes  it  at  the 
deuce. 

As  for  Mrs.  Margarine,  Mrs.  Man-of- 
Business,  the  erstwhile  portly  mother  of 
daughters  and  only  begetter  of  her  spouse's 
success,  really,  if  you  saw  her  in  her  boudoir, 
in  her  carriage,  at  Princes,  at  the  opera,  at 
Brighton,  or  at  Monte  Carlo,  you  would  not 
recognise  her.  She  is  young  and  slim;  her 
hair  is  of  flax;   she  has  rings  on  her  fingers, 


26        The  Egregious  English 

and  probably  bells  on  her  toes;  her  dia- 
monds are  the  envy  of  duchesses;  "and  as 
for  Margarine,  my  dear,  I  never  think  either 
about  it  or  him.  My  little  boys  are  at  Eton, 
and  Dickie  is  going  into  the  Guards."  Some- 
times even  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Man-of-Business 
manage  to  get  presented.  Then,  as  you  may 
say,  their  cup  runneth  over;  hand  in  hand 
they  stand  upon  their  Pisgah  and  stare  at  the 
Pacific  as  it  were.  There  are  no  more  worlds 
to  conquer.  They  come  down  with  a  light 
upon  their  faces,  and  Margarine,  Sons,  Bros. 
&  Co.  can  be  hanged.  In  point  of  fact,  Mar- 
garine, Sons,  Bros.  &  Co.  sooner  or  later  be- 
comes Margarine,  Sons,  Bros.  &  Co.,  Limited. 
Margarine  himself  drops  out,  taking  with  him 
all  the  money  he  can  get.  When  he  comes 
to  die,  if  you  said  '*  Margarine,"  he  would  do 
his  best  to  insult  you. 

That  is  all.  Of  course,  I  have  taken  an 
extreme  case,  but  apparently  the  desire  of 
the  latter-day  English  man  of  business  is 
wholly  in  these  directions.  Be  he  in  a  great 
or  small  way,  he  is  fain  to  step  westward ;  he 


The  Man  of  Business  27 

is  fain  to  live  as  the  Barbarians  and  to  be 
xindistinguishable  from  them.  And  rather 
than  be  beaten  he  will  enter  into  that  king- 
dom piecemeal.  Surpluses  that  would  have 
gone  to  consolidation  and  extension  in  the 
old  days  now  go  to  personal  and  feminine 
expenditure.  Bond  Street  captures  what  the 
wise  would  have  dumped  into  Threadneedle 
Street ;  and  instead  of  resting  our  hope  upon 
the  business  methods  of  Benjamin  Franklin 
and  Samuel  Budgett,  our  heart  inclines  to 
the  excellent  precepts  of  our  millionaire 
friend  ''  Yeth  Indeed."  Which  is  to  say  that 
the  English  man  of  business,  like  the  English 
sportsman,  is  dying  out  of  the  land.  Whether 
his  loss  will  be  deplored  by  countless  thou- 
sands is  another  question.  Anyway,  he  is 
going. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   JOURNALIST 

I  AM  dealing  here  with  the  English  jour- 
nalist, because  in  my  opinion,  after  the  Eng- 
lish sportsman  and  the  English  man  of 
business,  there  is  nothing  under  the  sun  so 
wonderfully  English  and  so  fearfully  foolish. 
The  elegant  and  austere  writer  who  gave  us 
The  Unspeakable  Scot  has  said  much  which 
he  no  doubt  hoped  would  lead  people  to  be- 
lieve that  the  British  Press  was  entirely  in 
the  hands  of  Scotsmen,  and  that  this  ac- 
counted at  once  for  its  dulness  and  its  con- 
tinual advertisement  of  Scottish  virtues.  For 
my  own  part,  I  have  no  hesitation  in  assert- 
ing that  Mr.  Crosland's  view  of  the  situation 
is  quite  a  mistaken  one.  In  any  case,  it  is 
obvious  that,  even  if  Fleet  Street  be,  as  Mr. 
28 


The  Journalist  29 

Crosland  suggests,  eaten  up  with  louts  from 
over  the  Border,  the  EngHsh  journalist  is  not 
yet  wholly  extinct,  and  somewhere  in  the 
land  the  remnant  of  him  stands  valiantly  to 
its  guns.  It  is  well  known,  however,  that, 
as  a  fact,  the  remnant  very  largely  outnum- 
bers its  hated  rival,  the  proportion  of  Scots 
to  the  proportion  of  Englishmen  on  the 
staffs  of  most  newspapers  being  probably 
no  higher  than  as  one  is  to  three.  So  that 
for  the  stodginess  and  fiat-footedness  of  the 
English  newspaper — the  epithets  are  Mr. 
Crosland' s  own — the  Englishman  is  at  least 
equally  to  blame  with  the  Scot.  Mr.  Cros- 
land's  main  complaint  against  the  newspaper 
press  of  his  country  is  that  it  lacks  brilliance. 
So  far  as  I  am  aware,  it  has  never  before  been 
asserted  that  the  function  of  a  newspaper  is 
to  be  brilliant.  News  is  news  all  over  the 
world.  To  write  brilliantly  of  a  dog-fight  or 
of  the  suicide  of  a  defaulting  clerk  may  be 
Mr.  Crosland' s  ambition  in  life,  but  most  per- 
sons possessing  such  an  ambition  would  trans- 
fer their  finical   attentions   from  the  field 


30        The  Egregious  English 

of  journalism  to  that  of  belles-lettres.  No 
doubt,  if  Mr.  Crosland  had  his  way,  the  morn- 
ing papers,  in  which  the  soul  of  the  average 
Englishman  so  delighteth,  would  be  pub- 
lished from  the  Bodley  Head  or  at  the  Sign  of 
the  Unicom,  or  haply  at  Mr.  Grant  Richards's. 
It  is  not  my  intention,  however,  to  enter 
into  a  sort  of  ten  nights'  discussion  with  Mr. 
Crosland.  He  has  had  his  say  and  taken  the 
whipping  he  deserved.  My  business  is  with 
the  English  journalist ;  and  while  I  shall  not 
descend  to  personalities  in  dealing  with  him, 
I  hope  to  show  that  his  brilliance  and  liveli- 
ness and  smartness,  though  much  vaunted, 
are  neither  a  boon  nor  a  blessing  either  to 
journalism  as  a  force  or  to  society  at  large. 
I  think  that  it  may  be  fairly  set  down  for  a 
fact  that  the  fine  flower  and  consummate  ex- 
pression of  English  journalism  is  the  half- 
penny newspaper.  At  any  rate,  nobody  would 
pretend  to  find  in  the  halfpenny  news- 
paper the  sententious  dulness  and  flat-f ooted- 
ness  which  are  supposed  to  characterise  the 
journalistic  work  of  the  Scot.     The  smartness 


The  Journalist  31 

of  the  halfpenny  press  is  indeed  not  even 
American.  There  is  but  one  epithet  for  it, 
and  that  is  EngUsh.  Broadly  speaking,  its 
appeal  is  directly  and  exclusively  to  the 
bathotic.  In  England  the  bathotic  has 
always  had  the  majority  in  its  grip.  The 
majority  notoriously  has  no  mind.  It  is  a 
thing  of  one  emotion,  an  instrument  of  one 
stop.  On  that  stop — ^the  bathotic  stop — the 
English  journalist  makes  a  point  of  playing. 
There  has  been  a  time  in  his  history  when  he 
believed  in  the  educative  possibilities  and 
duties  of  his  profession.  He  long  held  with 
the  Scot  that  the  Press  was  a  power,  and 
that  it  was  becoming  that  it  should  glory  in 
being  a  power  for  the  betterment  of  the  race. 
After  many  shrewd  searchings  and  commer- 
cial gropings,  the  English  journalist  discov- 
ered that  the  way  to  fame  and  fortune  lay  in 
the  mastery  of  the  bathotic  stop.  He  learned 
to  sing  songs  of  Araby  in  one  squalid  key 
every  morning,  and  he  has  since  been  able  to 
keep  a  gig  and  out-circulate  everything  that 
considers  itself  possessed  of  circulation.     He 


32         The  Egregious  English 

has  played,  as  one  might  say,  old  Harvey  with 
the  Daily  Telegraph.  He  has  put  the  Times  to 
the  shame  of  being  a  journal  that  *'  nobody 
reads."  More  than  all,  he  has  said  flatly  to 
the  English  people, "  You  are  a  rabbit-brained 
crowd,  and  here  for  your  delectation  and 
your  coppers  is  the  worst  that  can  be  writ- 
ten for  you." 

When  England  comes  to  her  day  of  reck- 
oning, in  the  hour  when  she  shall  see  her 
own  mischance  and  is  fain  to  remember 
the  names  of  her  destroyers,  none  of  them 
will  seem  to  her  so  flagrant  and  so  to  be 
deprecated  as  the  English  journalist.  "Be- 
hold," she  will  say,  "the  monster  who  con- 
vinced me  that  it  was  beautiful  to  split 
infinitives;  that  it  was  elegant  to  begin  six 
paragraphs  on  one  page  with  the  blessed 
statement,  *  A  dramatic  scene  was  enacted  in 
Mr.  Thingamybob's  court  yesterday';  that 
good  books  are  to  be  worthily  pronounced 
upon  by  sub-editors  in  the  intervals  of  wait- 
ing for  the  three  o'clock  winner;  and 
that,  so  far  from  being  a  reproach  to  one, 


The  Journalist  33 

the  bathetic  was  the  only  honourable  and 
creditable  attitude  of  mind." 

If  a  man  wish  to  perceive  to  what  degraded 
passes  the  art  of  writing  may  come  and  yet 
retain  the  qualities  of  intelligibility  and  ap- 
parent reasonableness,  let  him  peruse  the 
morning  papers  and  die  the  death.  The 
reek  and  offence  of  them  smells  to  heaven. 
They  are  a  sure  indication  of  the  decadence 
of  the  EngHsh  mind  and  of  the  cupidity  and 
unscrupulousness  of  the  English  journalist. 
There  has  been  nothing  like  them,  nothing  to 
compare  with  them,  for  cheapness  and  futility 
and  banality  in  the  history  of  the  world.  They 
are  more  to  be  fearful  of  than  the  pestilence, 
inasmuch  as  they  spell  intellectual  debase- 
ment, the  corruption  of  the  public  taste,  and 
the  defilement  of  the  public  spirit.  Their  very 
literal  innocuousness  condemns  them.  It  is 
their  boast  that  they  may  be  read  in  the  fam- 
ily without  a  blush.  Their  assumption  of 
morality  and  puritanical  straitlacedness  is 
admirable.  Beneath  it  there  lie  a  licentious- 
ness of  purpose,  a  disregard  for  what  is  just, 

3 


34        The  Egregious  English 

and  a  contempt  for  what  is  decent  and  of 
good  report  which  are  calculated  to  make  the 
angels  weep.  When  one  inquires  into  the 
personnel  of  the  staffs  by  which  these  papers 
are  run,  one  is  confronted  with  exactly  the 
kind  of  man  one  expects  to  meet.  First  of 
all,  he  is  English,  and  as  shallow  and  flippant 
and  irresponsible  as  only  an  Englishman  can 
be.  The  saving  touch  of  seriousness  does 
not  enter  into  his  composition.  He  neither 
reads  nor  thinks.  Beer,  billiards,  and  free 
lunches,  free  entry  to  the  less  edifying  places 
of  amusement,  a  minimum  of  work  and  a 
maximum  of  pay,  constitute  his  ideal  of  the 
journalist's  career,  and  he  is  always  doing  his 
best  to  live  up  to  it.  Of  responsibility  to 
anybody  save  his  immediate  chief,  who,  after 
all,  is  only  himself  at  a  little  higher  salary,  he 
has  not  the  smallest  notion.  His  duty  is 
neither  by  himself  nor  by  the  public.  All 
that  is  expected  of  him  is  loyalty  to  his  chief 
and  to  his  paper,  and  it  is  his  pride  and  joy 
that  this  loyalty  is  invariably  forthcoming. 
Very  occasionally  one  hears  that,  in  con- 


The  Journalist  35 

sequence  of  a  change  in  the  political  policy 
of  a  newspaper,  the  editor  of  that  paper  has 
considered  it  to  be  his  duty  to  resign  his  edi- 
torship. Probably  not  more  than  two  such 
resignations  have  occurred  in  English  jour- 
nalism during  the  past  twenty  years.  In 
both  instances  the  self-denying  editors  have 
been  held  up  by  the  English  papers  as  sub- 
lime examples  of  honour  and  martyrdom. 
That  there  is  nothing  extraordinary  in  stick- 
ing to  one's  principles,  even  though  it  means 
loss  of  livelihood,  does  not  appear  to  have 
dawned  upon  the  lively  English  mind.  Of 
course,  it  will  be  said  that,  if  every  member 
of  the  staff  of  a  newspaper,  down  even  to  the 
junior  reporters,  were  allowed  to  have  be- 
liefs and  principles,  and  were  not  expected  to 
write  anything  in  antagonism  to  them,  an 
exceedingly  remarkable  kind  of  newspaper 
would  result.  Compromise,  at  any  rate  on 
established  matters,  must  be  the  rule  of 
the  journalist's  life.  On  the  other  hand,  I 
incline  to  the  opinion  that  the  English 
journalist    is    far  too  swift  to  acquiesce  in 


36        The  Egregious  English 

doubtful  procedure,  and  that  where  the  mor- 
als, good  report,  and  high  character  of  a  paper 
are  concerned  it  is  better  to  have  a  Scotch 
staff  than  an  English  one.  Nothing  is  more 
characteristic  of  the  English  journalist  of  to- 
day than  the  circumstance  that  he  is  literally 
without  opinions  of  his  own.  He  takes  his 
opinions  from  his  chiefs,  just  as  his  chiefs 
take  their  opinions  from  their  proprietors,  or 
from  the  wire-pullers  with  whose  party  the 
paper  happens  to  be  associated.  In  a  sense 
it  is  impossible  that  it  should  be  otherwise. 
Yet  you  will  find  that  in  the  main  Scottish 
journalists  do  have  opinions  of  their  own,  and 
that  somehow  they  manage  to  be  loyal  to 
them.  For  weal  or  woe  the  Scot  is  immov- 
able and  imchangeable  as  the  granite  of  his 
own  hills.  You  can  never  get  him  to  see  that 
half-measures  are  either  desirable  or  neces- 
sary. He  will  not  stretch  his  conscience  nor 
palter  with  his  soul  for  any  man  or  any  man's 
money.  The  Englishman  is  all  the  other  way 
— that  is  why  he  makes  such  a  nimble  and 
even  brilliant  journalist. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    EMPLOYED    PERSON 

The  English  are  a  nation  of  employed  per- 
sons. Wherever  you  go,  from  Berwick  to 
Land^s  End,  you  will  find  that  in  the  main 
the  men  you  meet  are  somebody's  employees. 
The  better  kind  of  them  possibly  write  "  man- 
ager" on  their  cards;  some  of  them  even  are 
managing  directors;  others,  again,  are  part- 
ners in  wealthy  houses  or  heads  of  such 
houses.  Yet,  as  I  have  said,  they  strike  you 
almost  to  a  man  as  being  in  somebody's  em- 
ployment. Even  the  most  prosperous  of 
them  have  the  strained,  repressed,  furtive 
look  which  comes  of  the  long  turning  of  other 
people's  little  wheels ;  while  the  masses,  the 
employed  English  masses,  give  you,  as  re- 
gards appearance,   physique,   and  habit  of 

37 


3^        The  Egregious  English 

mind  alike,  an  excellent  notion  of  what  a 
galley-slave  must  have  been.  The  fact  of 
being  employed  is  indeed  the  only  big  and 
abiding  fact  in  the  average  Englishman's  life. 
It  has  its  effect  on  the  whole  man  from  the 
time  of  his  youth  to  the  time  of  his  death ;  it 
influences  his  actions  and  the  trend  of  his 
thoughts  to  a  far  greater  extent  than  any 
other  force — love  and  religion  included.  In 
the  Englishman's  view,  to  be  employed  is  the 
only  road  to  subsistence,  and,  if  one  be  am- 
bitious, the  only  road  to  honour.  He  must 
work  for  somebody,  otherwise  he  cannot  be 
happy.  The  notion  of  working  for  himself 
appals  him ;  and  if  by  any  chance  he  be  per- 
suaded to  take  the  plunge,  the  consideration 
that  he  has  no  master  weighs  so  heavily  upon 
him  that  his  end  is  usually  speedy  ruin  of  one 
sort  or  another.  That  is  to  say,  he  either 
takes  advantage  of  his  freedom  to  the  extent 
of  doing  no  work  at  all,  or,  in  the  absence  of 
the  guiding  hand,  he  loses  his  judgment  and 
throws  to  the  winds  the  caution  that  kept 
him  his  place.     It  is  a  pity,  there  can  be  no 


The  Employed  Person         39 

doubt ;  but  the  thing  is  in  the  English  blood. 
If  you  are  an  Englishman,  you  must  be  em- 
ployed ;  if  you  are  unemployed,  you  are  un- 
happy, and  worse.  For  a  full  century  the 
rich  merchants,  enterprising  manufacturers, 
colliery-owners,  mill-owners,  and  what  not, 
in  whom  the  English  put  their  trust,  have 
been  preaching  and  fomenting  this  doctrine 
by  every  means  in  their  power.  To  their  aid 
in  spreading  the  glorious  truth  they  have 
brought  the  moralists  and  the  Churches :  *'  *  if 
a  man  will  not  work,  neither  shall  he  eat.' 
'  Servants,  obey  your  masters.'  Punctuality 
is  the  soul  of  business.  Be  faithful  over  a 
few  things.  Begin  at  the  bottom  rung  of  the 
ladder.  Mr.  So-and-so,  the  notorious  bil- 
lionaire, was  once  a  poor  working-boy  in 
Manchester.  Furthermore,  if  you  don't  work 
and  at  our  price — well,  to  say  the  least  of  it, 
God  will  not  love  you." 

And  the  English — poor  bodies! — carry  on 
their  lives  accordingly.  The  whole  scheme 
of  things  is  arranged  to  fit  in  with  the  ideas 
of  employers  as  to  what  work  means,  imder 


40        The  Egregious  English 

what  conditions  it  should  be  performed,  and 
what  should  be  its  rewards.  To  live  in  the 
manner  pronounced  to  be  respectable  by  the 
moralists  and  the  Churches,  you  must  take 
upon  yourself  exactly  the  labours,  and  no 
others,  prescribed  by  the  employers.  In 
other  words,  to  keep  an  eight-roomed  house 
with  a  piano  in  it,  a  wife  with  blouses  and 
four  new  hats  a  year,  and  a  little  family  who 
can  go  to  church  on  Sunday  mornings  dressed 
as  well  as  any  of  them,  you  must  keep  Messrs. 
Reachemdown's  books,  and  pass  through 
your  hands  many  thousands  of  Messrs. 
Reachemdown's  moneys,  for  a  salary  of  £iSo 
a  year.  When  you  get  old  and  half  blind 
through  years  of  poring  over  Reachemdown's 
figures,  they  will  pension  you  off  at  a  pound 
a  week,  and  get  a  younger  man  to  do  the 
work  for  the  other  £2.  You,  good,  easy 
Englishman,  will,  in  your  heart  of  hearts, 
be  exceedingly  grateful  to  Reachemdown  & 
Reachemdown,  and  count  it  not  the  least  of 
your  many  blessings  that  you  have  never 
wanted  good  work  and  kind  employers.     You 


The  Employed  Person         41 

will  say  to  your  English  son,  ''  My  boy,  make 
up  your  mind  to  serve  people  well,  and  in 
your  old  age  they  will  never  forget  you. 
Always  be  industrious,  obliging,  and  respect- 
ful. Remember  that  a  rolling  stone  gathers 
no  moss,  and  never  forsake  the  substance  for 
the  shadow. ' '  And  the  chances  are  that  your 
fine  English  boy  will  do  exactly  what  you, 
his  fine  English  father,  have  done.  Indeed, 
if  he  be  old  enough  at  the  time  of  your  "re- 
tirement,'' he  might  very  appropriately  take 
your  place  at  Reachemdown  &  Reachem- 
down's;  then  he  will  marry,  he  will  live  in  a 
house  with  a  piano  in  it,  his  wife  will  have 
four  new  hats  a  year,  and  his  children  will  go 
to  church  on  Sundays  as  well  dressed  as  any 
of  them. 

On  the  whole,  I  should  be  sorry  to  say 
that  this  sort  of  thing  was  not  desirable.  If 
a  nation  is  to  be  great,  it  is  essential  that  it 
should  contain  a  large  body  of  workers,  and 
the  more  industrious  and  dependable  and 
trustworthy  that  body  of  workers,  the  better 
it  is  for  the  State  and  for  the  pillars  and  props 


42        The  Egregious  English 

of  the  State,  the  employers  included.  But 
the  point  is  that  the  English  take  too  much 
credit  for  it  and  get  too  much  ease  out  of  it. 
It  has  been  complained  by  Mr.  Crosland  and 
other  masters  of  elegant  English  that  the 
Scot  goes  to  London  and  the  smaller  indus- 
trial markets  and  there  enters  into  successful 
competition  with  the  English  employed,  and 
it  appears  to  annoy  Mr.  Crosland  that  the 
Scot  should  not  be  content  with  good  work, 
say  book-keeping  from  nine  to  six,  good 
wages,  say  £150  per  annum,  and  kind  em- 
ployers, say  Messrs.  Reachemdown  &  P.each- 
emdown,  all  his  life.  It  seems  to  annoy  him, 
too,  that  the  Scot  never  acquires  that  pa- 
thetic satisfaction  in  being  employed  which 
permeates  the  beautiful  spirit  of  his  English 
competitor.  You  will  meet  hoary  and  bald- 
headed  Englishmen  who  will  tell  you  with  a 
quaver  that  they  have  been  in  the  employ- 
ment of  one  and  the  same  house,  man  and 
boy,  for  over  half  a  century,  sir!  Somehow 
the  Englishman  tells  you  this  with  a  look  of 
pride,  and  rather  expects  you  to  regard  him 


The  Employed  Person         43 

as  a  sort  of  marvel.  It  never  occurs  to  him 
that  he  is  really  bragging  of  his  own  inepti- 
tude,— to  use  Mr.  Crosland's  favourite  ab- 
straction,— his  own  lack  of  enterprise.  The 
number  of  Scots  who  have  been  in  the  em- 
ployment of  one  house  for  forty  years,  least 
of  all  the  number  of  Scots  who  brag  about 
it,  is  probably  not  a  round  dozen.  As  a  gen- 
eral rule,  when  a  Scot  has  been  in  a  house 
forty  years,  it  is  his  house. 

Another  matter  in  which  the  English  em- 
ployee appears  to  me  to  err  mightily  is  his 
treatment  of  his  employer.  In  concerns  of 
great  magnitude  personal  relations  between 
employer  and  employed  are  often  impossi- 
ble, because  the  employer  seldom  comes  near 
the  place  where  his  money  is  made  for  him. 
Quite  frequently,  however,  he  is  accessible; 
yet  the  employee  knows  him  not.  He  would 
no  more  think  of  walking  up  and  shaking 
hands  with  him  than  he  would  think  of 
casting  himself  from  the  top  of  the  factory 
chimney-stack.  It  is  the  unwritten  law  of 
the  English  that  the  employer  is  a  better  man 


44        The  Egregious  English 

than  the  employed.  For  the  employee  to 
say  "  How  do ! "  to  the  employer ;  for  the  em- 
ployee to  meet  the  employer  in  the  street  and 
omit  to  make  respectful  obeisances;  for  the 
employee  to  assert  anywhere  outside  his  fa- 
vourite pot-house  that  Jack's  as  good  as  his 
master,  would  never  do.  If  you  are  paid 
wages,  you  must  be  grateful  and  respectful; 
and  though  you  know  quite  well  that  your 
employer  is  paying  you  just  as  little  as  ever 
he  can,  you  must  still  respect  him.  Broadly 
speaking,  we  manage  these  things  better  in 
Scotland ;  and,  for  that  matter,  the  Scot  man- 
ages them  better  in  England.  The  English 
employee  quirks  and  crawls  before  his  em- 
ployer, because  he  knows  that  his  employer 
can  exercise  over  him  powers  which,  if  they 
do  not  mean  exactly  life  and  death,  do  mean 
a  possibly  long  period  of  out-of-workness. 
And  out-of-workness  is,  as  a  rule,  the  most 
fearful  thing  in  life  that  can  happen  to  an 
Englishman,  for  the  simple  reason  that  he 
never  has  anything  behind  him.  If  he  has 
been  earning  fifty  pounds  a  year,  he  has 


The  Employed  Person         45 

spent  it  all;  if  he  has  been  earning  a  thou- 
sand a  year,  he  has  spent  it  all  and  more  to 
it.  With  the  Scot  it  is  different.  No  matter 
how  small  his  earnings,  he  invariably  con- 
trives to  save  a  portion  of  them.  When  he 
has  saved  a  hundred  pounds,  he  is  practically 
an  independent  man,  for  a  Scot  with  a  hun- 
dred pounds  at  his  disposal  can  defy,  and  can 
afford  to  defy,  any  employer  that  ever 
breathed  the  breath  of  life.  Besides,  hun- 
dred pounds  or  no  hundred  pounds,  the  Scot 
will  not  grovel.  He  does  his  work  and  his 
duty,  and  the  rest  can  go  hang.  His  days 
are  not  spent  in  blissful  contemplation  of  the 
joys  of  being  in  good  work ;  he  has  no  anxi- 
eties as  to  how  long  it  is  going  to  last;  he 
admits  no  superiorities;  he  is  afraid  of  no 
man.  Some  day,  perhaps,  the  Englishman 
will  learn  to  take  a  leaf  out  of  his  book.  The 
Englishman  will  learn  that  to  be  employed, 
excepting  with  a  view  to  greater  things  than 
subsistence,  is  to  be  in  a  condition  which 
borders  very  closely  on  degradation.  He 
will  learn  that  services  rendered  and  energies 


4^        The  Egregious  English 

expended  for  long  periods  of  years  without 
adequate  reward,  and  with  only  a  pretence 
at  advancement,  are  a  discredit  and  not  an 
honour.  He  will  learn  that  a  man  's  a  man, 
and  that  it  is  no  man's  business  to  be  so 
faithful  to  another  man  that  he  cannot  be 
faithful  to  himself. 


CHAPTER  VI 

CHIFFON 

It  pains  me  beyond  measure  to  say  it,  but 
I  think  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  ac- 
cumulated experience  and  wisdom  of  man- 
kind goes  to  show  that  at  the  bottom  of  most 
troubles  there  is  a  woman.  Since  Eve  and 
the  first  debacle,  it  has  been  woman  all  along 
the  line.  I  do  not  say  that  it  is  her  fault, 
but  the  fact  remains.  White  hands  cling  to 
the  bridle-rein,  and  the  horse  proceeds  ac- 
cordingly. It  is  woman  that  shapes  our 
ends,  rough-hew  them  as  we  will.  She  has  a 
delicate  finger  in  everybody's  pie.  No  mat- 
ter who  you  are,  some  woman  has  got  you  by 
a  little  bit  of  string.  Occasionally  you  are 
the  better  for  being  so  entangled;  but  nine 
times  out  of  ten  it  is  a  misfortune  for  you. 

47 


48        The  Egregious  English 

When  one  comes  to  look  closely  at  the  de- 
cadence of  the  English,  and  endeavours  to 
account  for  it  in  a  plain  way  and  without 
fear  or  prejudice,  one  cannot  help  perceiving 
that  here  again  one  has  a  pronounced  case  of 
woman,  woman,  woman.  Further, — and 
once  more  I  pray  that  I  may  not  seem  impo- 
lite,— the  woman  with  whom  you  have  to 
contend  in  England,  though  her  hand  be  full 
of  power,  is  not,  perhaps,  a  woman,  after  all. 
I  sometimes  think  that  she  may  be  best  and 
most  properly  expressed  in  the  word  "  Chif- 
fon." Whatever  she  may  have  been  in  the 
past,  however  sweet,  however  demure,  how- 
ever capable,  however  beautiful,  the  English- 
woman of  to-day  is  just  a  foolish  doll,  a  thing 
of  frills  and  fluff  and  patchouli,  a  daughter 
of  vanity,  and  a  worshipper  of  dressmakers. 
Under  her  little  foot,  under  her  mild,  blue, 
greedy  eye,  the  Englishman  has  become  a 
capering  carpet-knight,  one  who  dallies  at 
high  noon,  a  buck,  a  dandy,  an  unconvinced 
flippancy,  the  shadow  of  his  former  self.  Be 
he  father  or  merely  husband  of  the  fair,  his 


Chiffon  49 

case  is  pretty  much  the  same.  Both  at  home 
(if  he  can  find  it  in  his  heart  to  call  his 
conglomeration  of  cosey-comers  home)  and 
abroad  it  is  Chiffon  that  runs  him.  Chiffon 
must  have  a  house  full  of  fal-lals:  so  must 
the  Englishman.  Chiffon  delights  in  Chip- 
pendale that  a  sixteen-stone  male  person  dare 
not  sit  upon :  so  does  the  Englishman.  Chif- 
fon must  dine  late  off  French  kickshaws  with 
champagne  to  them:  so  must  the  English- 
man. Chiffon  must  not  have  more  than  two 
children,  whom  she  must  visit  and  kiss  once 
a  day :  it  is  the  same  with  the  Englishman. 
Chiffon  does  not  like  the  way  in  which  you 
are  running  your  newspaper:  the  English- 
man forthwith  nms  his  newspaper  another 
way.  Chiffon  does  not  like  that  cross-eyed 
clerk  of  yours;  she  is  sure  there  is  some- 
thing wrong  about  him ;  she  would  n't  trust 
him  with  a  hairpin,  my  dear !  He  gets  fired. 
Chiffon  is  fond  of  motor-cars  and  tiaras  of 
diamonds  and  eight-guinea  hats  and  three  or 
four  new  frocks  a  week,  and  she  hates  to  be 
worried  about  money  matters.     **  Poor  little 


so        The  Egregious  English 

Chiffon!"  says  the  good,  kind  EngHshman; 
**she  shall  be  happy,  even  though  we  drift 
sweetly  toward  Carey  Street.  We  must  keep 
it  up,  though  the  heavens  fall;  and  when  I 
come  to  think  of  it,  I  have  read  somewhere 
of  a  man  who  had  only  £s^^  year,  and  is 
now  in  receipt  of  £16,000  simply  through 
marrying  an  expensive  wife. ' '  Lower  down 
the  scale  it  is  just  the  same :  Chiffon  will  have 
this.  Chiffon  will  have  that,  and  so  will  the 
Englishman.  It  is  only  four-three  a  yard, 
and  it  will  make  up  lovely !  The  Englishman 
never  doubts  that  it  will.  Chiffon  discovers 
that  Chiffon  next  door  has  got  an  oak  par- 
loiir-organ  and  a  case  of  birds  on  the  instal- 
ment system.  ''She  is  getting  them  off  a 
Scotsman,"  says  Chiffon;  ''and  I  want 
some  too."  "Dry  those  pretty  eyes,"  says 
the  Englishman ;  "  I  will  apply  at  once  for  an 
extra  two-bob  a  week,  and  it  shall  be  done." 
The  children  of  Chiffon  next  door  are  "  tak- 
ing music  lessons  off  a  lidy  in  reduced  circum- 
stances." Chiffon's  children  are  as  good  as 
the  children  of  Chiffon  next  door  any  day  in 


Chiffon  5 1 

the  week — ^they,  too,  shall  take  music  lessons. 
The  Englishman  concurs. 

This,  of  course,  is  all  when  you  are  mar- 
ried to  her.  When  you  are  Chiffon's  fianci 
(she  would  not  have  you  say  sweetheart  or 
lover  for  worlds),  you  enjoy  what  is  com- 
monly called  in  England  a  high  old  time. 
First  of  all,  she  will  flirt  with  you  till  your 
reason  rocks  upon  its  throne.  Then,  when 
you  are  about  as  confused  as  a  little  boy  who 
has  fallen  out  of  a  balloon,  she  brings  you 
to  the  idiot-point,  informs  you  that  it  is  so 
sudden  and  that  she  does  n't  quite  know  what 
you  mean,  and  asks  you  if  you  do  not  think 
it  would  have  been  more  manly  on  your  part 
to  have  spoken  first  with  her  papa.  Being 
an  Englishman,  and  having  nothing  better 
to  do,  you  put  up  with  it  and  go  guiltily  off 
to  Chiffon's  delectable  male  parent.  He  in- 
quires into  your  income  in  pretty  much  the 
manner  of  a  person  who  is  going  to  lend  you 
;g2o  on  note  of  hand  only,  grunts  a  bit,  asks 
to  be  excused  while  he  has  a  word  with  the 
missis ;  comes  back,  says,  ''  Yes,  you  can  have 


52        The  Egregious  English 

her,"  and  next  morning  you  find  yourself  on 
the  same  old  stool,  in  front  of  the  same  old 
shiny  desk,  wondering  what  in  the  name  of 
heaven  you  have  done.  There  is  a  three- 
years'  courtship,  all  starch  and  theatre-tickets 
and  bouquets  and  fretfulness  and  anxiety; 
there  is  a  wedding  pageant,  got  up  specially 
for  the  purpose  of  annoying  the  neighbours; 
you  have  a  whirling  twenty  minutes  before 
a  company  of  curates,  who  persist  in  calling 
you  by  the  wrong  name;  you  go  home  in 
shivers ;  you  drink  soda-water  to  prevent  you 
from  getting  drunk;  you  make  a  speech  in 
the  tone  of  a  man  who  has  just  been  himg; 
you  find  yourself  feeling  rather  queer  aboard 
the  Dover  packet, — and  Chiffon  is  yours. 
Such  an  experience  at  a  time  of  life  when  a 
man  is  callow,  shy,  full  of  nerves,  and  un- 
versed in  the  serious  matters  of  life  is  boimd 
to  leave  its  mark  upon  the  character.  It 
takes  the  heart  out  of  most  men,  and  some 
of  them  never  get  it  back  again.  It  is  an 
English  institution  and  a  stupid  one.  Like 
many  another  English  institution,  it  has  its 


Chiffon  53 

basis  in  pretentiousness  and  display,  instead 
of  in  the  vital  issues  of  life.  In  Scotland  we 
make  marriages  on  different  and  more  serious 
principles.  There  are  no  Chiffons  in  Scot- 
land, whether  maids  or  matrons.  Conse- 
quently in  Scotland  there  are  precious  few 
fools.  Hard  heads,  sound  sense,  high  spirits, 
indomitable  will,  inexhaustible  energy,  are 
not  the  offspring  of  mammas  who  know  more 
about  cosmetics  than  about  swaddling- 
clothes,  and  who  suckle  their  children  out  of 
patent-food  tins.  One  of  the  rebukers  of  Mr. 
Crosland  has  pointed  out  with  some  pertin- 
ence that  the  Scotswoman  approximates 
more  closely  to  the  Wise  Man's  view  of  what 
a  good  wife  should  be  than  almost  any  other 
kind  of  woman  in  the  world.  Here,  as  Mr. 
Crosland  would  say,  is  Solomon : 

Who  can  find  a  virtuous  woman  ?  for  her  price  is  far 
above  rubies. 

The  heart  of  her  husband  doth  safely  trust  in  her, 
so  that  he  shall  have  no  need  of  spoil. 

She  will  do  him  good  and  not  evil  all  the  days  of  her 
life. 

She  seeketh  wool,  and  flax,  and  worketh  willingly 
with  her  hands. 


54        The  Egregious  English 

She  is  like  the  merchants'  ships;  she  bringeth  her 
food  from  afar. 

She  riseth  also  while  it  is  yet  night,  and  giveth  meat 
to  her  household,  and  a  portion  to  her  maidens. 

She  considereth  a  field,  and  buyeth  it:  with  the  fruit 
of  her  hands  she  planteth  a  vineyard. 

She  girdeth  her  loins  with  strength,  and  strengthen- 
eth  her  arms. 

She  perceiveth  that  her  merchandise  is  good:  her 
candle  goeth  not  out  by  night. 

She  layeth  her  hands  to  the  spindle,  and  her  hands 
hold  the  distaff. 

She  stretcheth  out  her  hand  to  the  poor;  yea,  she 
reacheth  forth  her  hands  to  the  needy. 

She  is  not  afraid  of  the  snow  for  her  household:  for 
all  her  household  are  clothed  with  scarlet. 

Her  husband  is  known  in  the  gates,  when  he  sitteth 
among  the  elders  of  the  land. 

She  maketh  fine  linen,  and  selleth  it;  and  delivereth 
girdles  unto  the  merchant. 

Strength  and  honour  are  her  clothing:  and  she  shall 
rejoice  in  time  to  come. 

She  openeth  her  mouth  with  wisdom;  and  in  her 
tongue  is  the  law  of  kindness. 

She  looketh  well  to  the  ways  of  her  household,  and 
eateth  not  the  bread  of  idleness. 

Her  children  arise  up,  and  call  her  blessed;  her  hus- 
band also,  and  he  praiseth  her. 

Yes,  Mr.  Crosland,  it  is  "very,  very,  very 
Scotch/*  What  poor  little  Chiffon  would 
think  of  it,  if  it  were  put  before  her  as  a  stan- 
dard of  wifely  qualification  and  duty,  nobody 
but  the  Englishman  knows.     Perhaps  she 


Chiffon  55 

would  shrug  her  shoulders  and  say,  "  How 
absurd!"  Perhaps  she  would  not  under- 
stand it  at  all. 

The  Englishwoman's  love  of  petty  display 
and  cheap  fripperies,  her  desire  to  outshine 
the  neighbours  and  to  put  all  she  has  on  her 
back,  and  to  pass  everywhere  for  a  woman 
of  means  and  station,  no  doubt  had  its  be- 
ginning in  a  laudable  anxiety  to  make  the 
best  of  things.  Unfortunately,  however,  the 
tendency  has  been  developed  out  of  reason, 
to  the  neglect  of  the  qualities  which  make  a 
woman  the  inspiration  and  strength  of  a 
man's  life.  To  dress,  and  to  talking  and 
thinking  about  it,  the  Englishwoman  devotes 
unconscionable  hours.  The  bare  business  of 
robing  and  disrobing  takes  up  pretty  well  half 
her  waking  day.  Her  transference  from  the 
bath  to  the  breakfast-table  cannot  be  accom- 
plished under  fifty  minutes.  Before  she  will 
appear  in  the  open  she  will  make  yet  another 
toilet.  She  is  a  full  twenty  minutes  tidying 
herself  before  lunch.  In  the  afternoon  there 
is  an  hour  of  getting  into  tea-gowns;    and, 


56        The  Egregious  English 

crowning  rite  of  all,  my  lady  "strips"  for 
dinner.  From  mom  to  dewy  eve  her  little 
mind  is  busy  with  dress.  The  shopping,  over 
which  she  makes  such  a  fuss,  is  almost  in- 
variably a  matter  of  new  frocks,  new  hats, 
new  shoes,  new  feathers,  matching  this,  ex- 
changing that,  sitting  on  high  stools  before 
pomatumed  counter-skippers,  and  dissipat- 
ing, in  the  purchase  of  sheer  superfluities, 
gold  that  men  have  toiled  for.  Her  visiting 
is  equally  an  unmitigatedly  dressy  matter; 
she  goes  to  see  her  friends'  frocks,  not  her 
friends,  and  it  is  the  delight  of  her  soul  to 
turn  up  in  toilettes  which  render  her  friends 
frankly  and  miserably  envious.  Of  the  real 
purport  of  clothes  she  knows  nothing;  and 
if  you  endeavour  to  explain  it  to  her,  she 
will  charge  you  with  the  wish  to  make  an  old 
frump  of  her  before  her  time.  As  for  the  ex- 
pense of  it  all,  she  never  bothers  her  pretty 
head  about  money  matters ;  she  tells  you  in 
the  most  childlike  way  that  her  account  at 
the  bank  seems  to  be  perpetually  overdrawn, 
but   that   "Randall   is   a   dear,    kind   boy, 


Chiflfon  57 

though  he  does  swear  a  bit  when  some  of  the 
bills  come  in.  Besides,"  she  says,  ''I  am 
sure  it  helps  him  in  his  profession  to  have  a 
well-dressed  wife." 

And  the  pity  of  it  is,  that  quite  frequently 
the  person  upon  which  these  adornments  are 
lavished  is  really  not  worth  the  embellish- 
ment, and  would  indeed  be  far  better  served 
and  make  a  far  better  show  in  the  least  elab- 
orate of  garments.  For,  notoriously,  the 
physique  of  the  Englishwoman  of  the  middle 
and  upper  classes  is  not  now  what  it  was.  In 
height,  in  figure,  in  suppleness  and  grace  of 
build,  the  Scottish  woman  can  give  her  Eng- 
lish sister  many  points.  In  the  matter  of 
facial  beauty,  too,  the  Englishwoman  cannot 
be  said  particularly  to  shine.  At  a  Drawing- 
Room,  at  the  opera,  the  beauty  of  England 
spreads  itself  for  your  gaze ;  and  the  amazing 
lack  both  of  beauty  and  the  promise  of  it 
appals  you.  If  we  are  to  believe  the  society 
papers,  there  is  not  an  ugly  nor  a  plain-feat- 
ured woman  of  means  in  all  broad  England. 
Every  week  the  English  illustrated  journals 


5^        The  Egregious  English 

give  you  pages  of  photographs,  beneath 
which  you  may  read  in  entrancing  capital 
letters,  "The  beautiful  Miss  Snooks,"  or 
''  Lady  Beertap's  two  beautiful  daughters." 
Yet  the  merest  glance  at  those  photographs 
convinces  you  that  Miss  Snooks  is  about  as 
good-looking  as  the  average  kitchen-wench, 
while  the  two  beautiful  daughters  of  Lady 
Beertap  have  faces  like  the  backs  of  cabs. 
The  fact  is,  that  the  so-called  English  beauty 
is  a  rare  thing  and  a  fragile  thing.  Fully 
seventy-five  per  cent,  of  Englishwomen  are 
not  beautiful  to  look  upon.  Of  the  other 
twenty-five  per  cent.,  one  here  and  there — 
perhaps  one  in  a  thousand — could  stand  be- 
side the  Venus  of  Milo  without  blenching. 
For  the  rest,  they  have  a  girlish  prettiness 
which  accompanies  them  into  their  thirtieth 
year,  and  sickens  slowly  into  a  sourness.  At 
forty,  little  Chiffon,  who  was  so  pretty  at 
twenty,  has  crow's-feet  and  flat  cheeks,  and 
a  distinct  tendency  to  the  nut-cracker  type  of 
profile. 


CHAPTER  VII 


THE    SOLDIER 


"With  a  tow-row-row-row-row-row  for 
the  British  Grenadiers!"  Which,  of  course, 
means  the  English  Grenadiers,  inasmuch  as 
there  never  were  any  Scottish  Grenadiers. 
To-day,  however,  the  Enghsh  do  not  sing 
this  song.  Their  grandfathers  deHghted  in 
it,  and  the  tune  still  survives  as  a  soldier- 
man's  march.  But  when  the  modern  Eng- 
lish wish  to  celebrate  the  English  soldier 
vocally,  they  do  it  in  their  own  decadent, 
bathotic  way.  They  have  an  idiot-song 
called  Tommy  Atkins.  The  chorus  of  it  goes 
somewhat  in  this  wise : 

Oh!  Tommy,  Tommy  Atkins, 

You're  a  good  'un,  heart  and  hand; 

You're  a  credit  to  your  nation 
And  to  your  native  land. 

59 


6o        The  Egregious  English 

May  your  hand  be  ever  ready ! 

May  your  heart  be  ever  true  J 
God  bless  you,  Tommy  Atkins! 

Here  's  your  country's  love  to  you! 

And  since  the  outbreak  of  the  late  war,  at 
any  rate,  the  English  do  not  speak  of  soldiers, 
but  of  Tommies;  and  the  principal  English 
poet  has  gone  farther,  and  dubbed  them  Ab- 
sent-Minded  Beggars.  Since  the  outbreak 
of  the  war,  too,  it  has  been  necessary  to 
issue  from  time  to  time  words  of  caution 
to  the  great  English  public.  Lord  Roberts 
— ** Little  Bobs,"  I  suppose,  I  should  call  him, 
in  the  choice  English  fashion — has  on  two  or 
three  occasions  deemed  it  advisable  to  let  it 
be  known  that  his  desire  was  that  the  great 
English  public  should  discontinue  the  prac- 
tice of  treating  Cape-bound  or  returned 
Tommies  to  alcoholic  stimulants,  and  sub- 
stitute therefor  mineral  waters  or  cocoa.  This 
was  very  wise  on  Little  Bobs's  part,  and 
it  has  no  doubt  saved  at  least  two  Cape- 
bound  or  returned  Tommies  from  the  degrada- 
tion of  an  almighty  drunk.  I  mention  this 
because  it  illustrates  in  an  exceedingly  quaint 


The  Soldier  6i 

way  the  attitude  of  the  EngHsh  towards  the 
soldier.  When  there  is  war  toward,  the  sol- 
dier is  absolutely  the  most  popular  kind  of 
man  in  England.  In  peace-time  an  English 
soldier  is  commonly  credited  with  being  so- 
cially vile  and  unpresentable.  There  is  a 
popular  conundrum  which  runs,  "What  is 
the  difference  between  a  soldier  and  a  meer- 
schaum pipe?"  and  the  answer,  I  regret  to 
say,  is,  "One  is  the  scum  of  the  earth,  and 
the  other  the  scum  of  the  sea."  Tommy's 
place  in  the  piping  times  of  peace  is  Just  at 
the  bottom  of  the  social  ladder;  there  he 
must  stay,  and  drink  four  ale,  and  smoke 
cheap  shag,  and  sit  at  the  back  of  the  gallery 
in  places  of  amusement.  Then  war  comes 
along,  and  the  English  bosom  expands  to  the 
sound  of  the  distant  drum,  and  to  the  rumour 
of  still  more  distant  carnage.  Who  is  it  that's 
a-working  this  'ere  blooming  war?  Blest  if 
it  ain't  our  old  friend  Tommy  Atkins !  Fetch 
him  out  of  the  four-ale  bar  at  once.  The 
nation's  heroes  have  no  business  in  four-ale 
bars.     The  saloon  bar  is  the  place  for  them, 


62        The  Egregious  English 

and  the  barmaid  shall  smile  upon  them,  and 
they  shall  have  free  drinks  and  free  cigars  till 
all's  blue;  for  they  are  the  nation's  heroes, 
and  they  deserve  well  of  their  country.  Fur- 
thermore, if  they  wish  to  visit  those  great 
and  glorious  centres  of  enlightened  entertain- 
ment commonly  called  the  Halls,  they  shall 
no  longer  be  stuffed  obscurely  away  in  the 
rear  portion  of  the  gallery,  but  they  shall 
come  out  into  the  light  of  things ;  they  shall 
come  blushingly  and  amid  acclaim  into  the 
pit  or  the  stalls,  or,  for  that  matter,  into  any 
part  of  the  'ouse. 

Throughout  the  war  this  has  been  so.  It 
was  so  till  yesterday.  But  the  ancient  Eng- 
lish smugness  has  begun  to  assert  itself  once 
more;  and  Tommy  —  dear  Tommy,  God- 
bless-you  Tommy,  in  fact — finds  staring  him 
in  the  face,  as  of  yore,  **  Soldiers  in  uniform 
not  served  in  this  compartment";  ''Soldiers 
in  uniform  cannot  be  admitted  to  any  part 
of  this  theatre  except  the  gallery."  The 
English  Kipling  hit  the  whole  matter  off  in 
his  vulgar  way  when  he  wrote  Tommy: 


The  Soldier  63 

I  went  into  a  theatre  as  sober  as  could  be; 

They  gave  a  drunk  civilian  room,  but  'ad  n't  none  for 

me; 
They  sent  me  to  a  gallery,  or  round  the  music- 'alls; 
But  when  it  comes  to  fightin' — Lord!  they'll  shove  me 

in  the  stalls! 

For  it 's  Tommy  this  and  Tommy  that,  an' ' '  Tommy , 
wait  outside"; 

But  it's  "Special  train  for  Atkins"  when  the 
trooper 's  on  the  tide — 

The  troopship's  on  the  tide,  my  boys — the  troop- 
ship's on  the  tide: 

Oh!  it's  "Special  train  for  Atkins"  when  the 
trooper 's  on  the  tide. 

We  were  told  that  this  war,  if  it  were 
doing  England  no  other  good,  was  at  least 
bringing  her  to  a  right  understanding  of  the 
soldier-man.  It  was  teaching  her  to  take 
him  by  the  hand,  to  recognise  in  him  a  cred- 
itable son  and  an  essential  factor  in  the  State. 
It  has  ended  in  the  way  in  which  pretty  well 
every  English  revival  does  end — namely,  in 
smoke.  Though  England  has  as  much  need 
of  the  soldier  and  is  as  much  dependent  upon 
him  for  peace  and  security  as  any  other 
nation,  she  has  never  been  able — excepting, 
as  I  have  said,  in  time  of  war — to  bring  her 
greedy  mind  to  the  pass  of  doing  him  the 


64        The  Egregious  English 

smallest  honour  or  of  rendering  to  him  that 
measure  of  social  credit  which  is  obviously 
his  by  right. 

That  the  English  Tommy  is  not  altogether 
a  delectable  person,  however,  goes,  I  think, 
without  saying.  According  to  General  Bul- 
ler  and  other  more  or  less  competent  author- 
ities, the  men  in  South  Africa  were  splendid. 
I  do  not  doubt  it  in  the  least.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  "returns"  from  that  country  have 
not  struck  one  as  reaching  a  high  standard 
of  savouriness  or  manliness;  and,  however 
splendid  he  may  have  been  as  a  campaigner, 
as  an  ex-campaigner  the  English  Tommy  has 
scarcely  shone ;  so  that  in  a  sense  the  changed 
attitude  of  the  English  public  mind  towards 
him  is  not  to  be  wondered  at. 

Elsewhere  in  this  essay  I  have  pointed  out 
that  the  late  war  has  not  reflected  any  too 
much  credit  upon  that  chiefest  of  snobs — 
the  English  military  officer.  To  go  into  the 
army  has  long  been  considered  good  form 
among  the  English  Barbarians,  and  to  be  an 
officer  in  a  swagger  regiment  may  be  reckoned 


The  Soldier  65 

one  of  the  best  passports  to  English  society. 
It  gives  a  man  a  tone,  and  puts  him  on  a 
footing  with  the  highest,  because  an  officer  is 
a  gentleman  in  a  very  special  sense.  But  it  is 
well  known  that,  during  the  past  half-cen- 
tury or  so,  the  English  Barbarians  have  been 
too  prone  to  put  their  sons  into  the  army  for 
social  considerations  only,  and  without  re- 
gard to  their  qualification  or  call  for  the  pro- 
fession of  arms.  And  in  the  long  result  it 
has  come  to  pass  that  the  English  army  is 
officered  by  men  who  know  as  little  as  pos- 
sible and  care  a  great  deal  less  about  their 
profession,  and  are  compelled  to  leave  the 
instruction,  and  as  often  as  not  the  leader- 
ship, of  their  men  to  non-commissioned 
officers.  Over  and  over  again  in  the  South 
African  campaign  it  was  the  commissioned 
officer  who  blundered  and  brought  about 
disaster,  and  the  non-commissioned  officers 
and  the  horse  sense  of  the  rank  and  file  that 
saved  whatever  of  the  situation  there  might 
be  left  to  save.     Probably  the  true  history 

of  the  British  reverses,  major  and  minor,  in 

5 


66        The  Egregious  English 

South  Africa  will  never  be  made  public.  But 
I  believe  it  can  be  shown  that  in  almost 
every  instance  it  was  the  incapacity  or  re- 
missness of  the  English  commissioned  officer 
which  lay  at  the  root  of  the  trouble.  The 
fact  is,  that  the  monocled  motintebank  who 
is  in  the  army,  don't  you  know,  seldom  or 
never  understands  his  job.  He  is  too  busy 
messing,  and  dancing,  and  flirting,  and  philan- 
dering, and  racing,  and  gambling,  and  speed- 
ing the  time  merrily,  ever  to  learn  it.  That 
the  honour  of  Britain,  and  the  lives  of  Eng- 
lishmen, Scotsmen,  and  Irishmen,  should  be 
in  his  listless,  damp  hand  for  even  as  long  as 
five  minutes  is  an  intolerable  scandal.  That 
he  should  haw  and  haw,  and  yaw  and  yaw, 
on  the  barrack-square,  and  take  a  salary  out 
of  the  public  purse  for  doing  it,  shows  exactly 
how  persistently  stupid  the  English  can  be. 
Of  course,  the  common  reply  to  any  attack 
upon  these  shallow-pated  incompetents  is 
that  you  must  have  gentlemen  for  the  King's 
commissions,  and  that  the  pay  the  King's 
commissions  carry  is  so  inadequate  that  no 


The  Soldier  67 

gentleman  unpossessed  of  private  means  can 
afford  to  take  one.  This  is  a  very  pretty- 
argument  and  exceedingly  English.  The 
money  will  not  run  to  capable  men;  there- 
fore let  us  fling  it  away  on  fools.  Army  re- 
form, sweeping  changes  at  the  War  Office, 
new  army  regulations,  an  army  on  a  busi- 
ness footing,  and  so  on  and  so  forth,  are 
always  being  clamoured  for  by  the  English 
people,  and  always  being  promised  by  the 
English  Government.  But  until  the  day 
when  the  granting  of  commissions  and  pro- 
motion are  as  little  dependent  upon  social 
influence  and  the  influence  of  money  as  ad- 
vancement in  the  law  or  advancement  in  the 
arts,  the  English  army  will  remain  just  where 
it  is  and  just  as  rotten  as  it  is. 

For  downright  childishness  the  modem 
English  soldier,  whether  he  be  officer  or  file- 
man,  has  perhaps  no  compeer.  When  the 
South  African  War  broke  out.  Tommy  and 
his  officers  were  men  of  scarlet  and  pipe-clay 
and  gold  lace  and  magnificent  head-dresses. 
Also  all  drill  was  in  close  order ;  you  were  to 


68        The  Egregious  English 

shove  in  your  infantry  first,  supported  by 
your  artillery,  and  deliver  your  last  brilliant 
stroke  with  your  cavalry.  The  men  should 
go  into  the  fray  with  bands  playing,  flags 
flying,  and  dressed  as  for  parade.  You  com- 
menced operations  with  move  No.  i ;  the 
enemy  would  assuredly  reply  with  move  No. 
2 ;  you  would  then  rush  in  with  move  No.  3  ; 
there  would  be  a  famous  victory,  and  the 
streets  of  London  would  be  illuminated  at 
great  expense.  In  South  Africa  matters  did 
not  quite  pan  out  that  way;  the  enemy  de- 
clined absolutely  to  play  the  stereotyped 
war-game,  for  the  very  simple  reason  that 
they  did  not  know  it,  and  that  South  Africa 
is  not  quite  of  the  contour  of  a  chess-board. 
And  so  the  English  had  to  change  their  cher- 
ished system,  and  to  learn  to  ride,  and  to 
throw  their  pretty  uniforms  into  the  old- 
clothes  baskets,  and  to  get  out  of  their  old 
drill  into  a  drill  which  was  no  drill  at  all,  and 
to  give  up  resting  their  last  hope  on  the 
British  square,  and  to  get  accustomed  to 
deadly  conflict  with  an  enemy  whom  they 


The  Soldier  69 

never  saw  and  who  never  took  the  trouble  to 
inform  them  whether  they  had  beaten  him 
or  not.  It  was  all  very  trying  and  all  very 
bewildering,  and  it  is  to  the  credit  of  the 
English  army  that  in  the  course  of  a  year  or 
two  it  did  actually  manage  to  understand 
the  precise  nature  of  the  work  cut  out  for  it 
and  made  some  show  of  dealing  with  it  in  a 
workman-like  way. 

Here  was  a  lesson  for  us,  and  we  learned  it. 
An  Englishman,  you  know,  can  learn  any- 
thing when  he  makes  up  his  mind  to  it.  And 
he  has  learned  this  South  African  lesson 
thoroughly  well ;  so  well,  indeed,  that  it  looks 
like  being  the  only  lesson  he  will  be  able  to 
repeat  any  time  in  the  next  half -century. 
For  what  has  he  done?  Well,  to  judge  by 
appearances,  we  must  reason  this  way:  "I 
was  not  prepared  for  this  South  African 
business.  It  was  a  new  thing  to  me.  It 
gave  me  a  new  notion  of  the  whole  art  and 
practice  of  war.  The  old  authorities  were 
clean  out  of  it.  Therefore  I  solemnly  abjure 
the  old  authorities.     For  the  future  I  wear 


70        The  Egregious  English 

slouch-hats  and  khaki  and  puttees  and  a 
jacket  full  of  pockets,  and  I  drill  for  the 
express  notion  that  I  may  some  day  meet  a 
Boer  farmer.  The  entire  sartorial  and  gen- 
eral aspect  of  my  army  shall  be  remodelled 
on  lines  which  might  induce  one  to  think 
that  the  sole  enemy  of  mankind  was  Mr. 
Kruger,  and  the  great  military  centre  of  the 
world  was  Pretoria."  It  does  not  seem  to 
occur  to  the  poor  body  that  his  next  great 
trial  is  not  in  the  least  likely  to  overtake 
him  in  South  Africa.  He  has  had  to  fight 
on  the  Continent  of  Europe  before  to-day, 
and  I  shall  not  be  surprised  if  he  has  to  do 
it  again  before  many  years  have  passed  over 
his  head.  Yet,  wherever  his  next  large  fight- 
ing has  to  be  done,  you  will  find  that  he  will 
sail  into  it  in  his  good  old  infantile,  stupid 
English  way,  armed  cap-a-pie  for  the  special 
destruction  of  Boers.  It  is  just  gross  want  of 
sense,  and  that  is  all  that  can  be  said  for  it. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   NAVY 

Since  Trafalgar,  the  English  navy  has 
been  the  apple  of  the  Englishman's  eye.  He 
holds  that  the  English  power  is  a  sea-power ; 
that  these  leviathans  afloat,  the  King's  ships, 
are  his  first  line  of  defence ;  and  that  so  long 
as  he  keeps  the  English  navy  up  to  the  mark 
he  can  defy  the  world.  His  method  of  keep- 
ing it  up  to  the  mark  is  most  singular.  It 
consists  of  tinkering  with  old  ships  genera- 
tion after  generation,  laying  down  new  ones 
which  seemingly  never  get  finished,  and  of 
being  chronically  short  of  men.  The  naval 
critics  of  England  may  be  divided  sharply 
into  two  camps.  In  the  one  we  have  a 
number  of  gentlemen  who  are  naval  critics 
simply  because  they  happen  to  be  connected 
71 


72        The  Egregious  English 

with  newspapers.  These  young  persons 
are  naturally  anxious  to  do  the  best  that 
can  be  done  for  their  papers  and  for  them- 
selves. They  recognise  that  if  they  are  to 
be  in  a  position  to  obtain  immediate  and 
first-hand  information — not  to  say  exclusive 
information — as  to  naval  doings,  they  must 
stand  well  with  the  Admiralty  and  the  au- 
thorities. The  Admiralty  and  the  authori- 
ties are  not  in  need  of  adverse  critics.  What 
they  like  and  what  they  will  have  are  smily, 
wily  reporters,  who  will  swear  with  the  offi- 
cial word,  see  with  the  official  eye,  and  take 
the  rest  for  granted.  In  the  other  camp  of 
naval  critics  you  have  a  bright  collection  of 
book-compilers,  naval  architects,  and  patent- 
mongers,  all  of  whom  have  some  sort  of  fad 
to  exploit  or  some  private  axe  to  grind. 
Hence  the  amiable  English  taxpayer  knows 
just  as  much  at  the  present  moment  about 
his  navy  as  he  knew  three  years  ago  about 
his  army.  In  spite  of  the  perfervid  assur- 
ances of  Mr.  Kipling,  and  of  the  ill-written, 
anti-scare  manifestoes  of  the  morning  papers. 


The  Navy  73 

the  English  taxpayer  knows  in  his  heart  that 
all  is  not  so  well  as  it  might  be  with  the  Eng- 
lish navy.  What  is  wrong  the  English  tax- 
payer cannot  tell  you;  but  there  it  is,  and 
he  has  a  sort  of  feeling  that,  when  the  big 
sea-tussle  comes,  the  English  navy,  being 
tried,  will  be  found  wanting.  Herein  I  think 
he  shows  great  prescience.  The  superstition 
to  the  effect  that  the  English  rule  the  waves 
has  of  late  begun  to  be  known  for  what  it  is. 
There  are  nowadays  other  Richmonds  in  the 
field,  all  bent  on  doing  a  little  wave-ruling 
on  their  own  account.  And  after  the  first 
start  of  surprise  and  astonishment,  the  sleepy, 
slack,  undisceming  Englishman  has  just  let 
things  go  on  as  they  were,  and  has  just  dilly- 
dallied what  time  the  new  wave-rulers  were 
building  and  equipping  the  finest  battle-ships 
that  modem  science  can  put  afloat,  and  mak- 
ing arrangements  for  the  acquisition  of  as 
much  naval  supremacy  as  they  can  lay  their 
hands  on.  And  whether  the  English  navy 
be  or  be  not  as  efficient  as  the  Admiralty  and 
the  admirals  would  have  us  believe,   it  is 


74        The  Egregious  English 

quite  certain  that,  in  consequence  of  bud- 
ding wave-rulers,  the  EngHsh  navy  is  not,  on 
the  whole,  so  formidable  a  weapon  or  so  im- 
pregnable a  defence  as  it  ought  to  be.  The 
fact  is,  that  in  the  matter  of  naval  strength, 
offensive  and  defensive,  the  English  are  just 
a  quarter  of  a  century  behind.  They  slept 
whilst  their  good  friends  the  French,  the 
Russians,  and  the  Germans  were  climbing 
upward  in  the  dark ;  and  when  they  woke  it 
was  to  perceive  that  another  navy  had  sprung 
into  existence  by  the  side  of  the  English 
navy,  and  that  the  task  of  catching  up,  of 
putting  the  old  navy  into  a  position  of  ab- 
solute supremacy  over  the  new,  was  well- 
nigh  an  impossible  one.  You  cannot  build 
line-of-battle  ships  in  an  hour.  Further- 
more, the  yards  of  England,  though  capable 
of  extraordinary  achievements,  are  not  ca- 
pable of  a  greater  output  than  the  yards 
of  France,  Russia,  and  Germany  conjoined. 
Half  a  century  ago  the  English  had  a  dis- 
tinct and  preponderating  start.  When  the 
other  powers  began  to  show  increased  activ- 


The  Navy  75 

ity  in  the  matter  of  shipbuilding,  the  Eng- 
Hsh  said,  ''It  is  of  no  consequence;  let  'em 
build."  They  threw  their  start  clean  away. 
The  probabilities  are  that  they  will  never  be 
able  to  regain  it. 

Quite  apart  from  the  large  general  ques- 
tion, however,  and  granting  that  on  paper 
England's  sea-power  is  equal  to  that  of  any 
three  powers  combined,  it  cannot  have 
escaped  the  attention  of  the  interested  that 
the  foreign  naval  experts  view  our  whole 
flotilla  with  a  singular  calm,  and  appear  to 
be  quite  amused  when  we  talk  of  naval 
efficiency  and  advancement.  It  is  pretty 
certain  that  this  calm  and  this  amusement 
are  not  based  entirely  in  either  ignorance  or 
arrogance.  Ships  built  and  fitted  in  Contin- 
ental yards  may  lack  the  advantage  of  being 
English  built,  but  they  are  fighting-ships 
nevertheless,  and  they  have  not  much  to 
lose  by  comparison  with  the  best  English 
fighting-ships,  even  when  the  comparison  is 
made  by  English  experts.  Indeed,  it  is  very 
much  open  to  question  whether  some  of  the 


76        The  Egregious  English 

Continental  ships  are  not  a  long  way  ahead 
of  some  of  the  best  English  ships  in  destruc- 
tive power  and  possibilities  for  fight.  Of 
course  the  common  reply  to  this  is,  that  it  is 
no  good  having  a  fine  machine  unless  you 
have  the  right  man  to  handle  it.  And  Jack, 
of  course, — the  honest  English  Jack, — is  the 
only  man  in  the  world  that  really  knows  how 
to  handle  fighting-ships.  Well,  it  may  be  so, 
or  it  may  not  be  so.  The  Englishman  will 
undoubtedly  keep  his  engines  going  and 
stick  to  his  guns  till  chaos  engulfs  him.  It 
seems  possible,  too,  that  he  has  made  him- 
self thoroughly  familiar  with  every  detail  of 
the  machine  he  has  got  to  work,  and  that  he 
knows  his  business  in  a  way  which  leaves 
precious  little  room  for  more  intimate  know- 
ledge. In  spite  of  all  this,  however,  it 
cannot  be  denied  that  the  Continental  navy- 
man  is  slowly  but  surely  creeping  up  to  the 
English  standard.  That  as  a  rule  he  is  a 
man  of  better  family  than  the  English  navy- 
man,  that  his  conditions  of  service  are  more 
favourable,  and  that  his  food  and  accommo- 


The  Navy  ^^ 

dation  are  better,  are  all  in  his  favour.  He 
may  lack  the  steadiness  and  the  grit  of  the 
old  original  English  hearts  of  oak.  Still,  he 
is  coming  on  and  making  progress ;  whereas 
the  old  original  English  hearts  of  oak  do  not 
appear  to  be  getting  much  ''forrader."  Be- 
sides, it  is  well  known  that  the  English  do 
not  possess  anything  like  enough  of  them,  and 
those  whom  they  do  possess  have  such  a  love 
for  the  service  that  they  take  particularly 
good  care  to  warn  would-be  recruits  off  it. 

From  time  immemorial  the  English  have 
made  a  point  of  treating  the  saviours  of  their 
country  meanly  and  shabbily.  In  the  Crimea 
the  English  troops  were  half-starved  and 
went  about  in  rags,  while  a  lot  of  broad- 
shouldered,  genial  Englishmen  made  fortunes 
out  of  army  contracts.  It  was  the  same  in 
the  Transvaal,  and  it  will  be  the  same  when- 
ever England  is  at  war.  In  peace-time  she 
does  manage  to  keep  her  soldiers  and  sailors 
decently  dressed,  but  it  is  notorious  that  she 
nips  them  in  the  paunch,  and  that  the  roast 
beef  and  plum-pudding  and  flagons  of  Octo- 


78        The  Egregious  English 

ber  which  are  supposed  to  be  the  meat  and 
drink  of  John  Bull  are  not  considered  good 
for  his  brave  defenders.  A  beef-fed  army 
and  a  beef -fed  navy  are  what  Englishmen 
believe  they  get  for  their  money.  The  rank 
and  file  of  the  army  and  navy  are  better  in- 
formed. With  a  navy  that  is  undersized, 
undermanned,  underfed,  and  underpaid,  the 
English  chances  of  triumph,  when  her  real 
strength  is  put  to  the  test,  are  problemati- 
cal. Meanwhile,  we  may  comfort  ourselves 
with  Mr.  Kipling  and  the  Daily  Telegraph. 


CHAPTER  IX 

-      THE    CHURCHES 

The  English  have  one  sauce.  But  the 
number  of  their  reHgions  is  as  the  sands  of 
the  sea.  Roughly  speaking,  they  divide 
themselves  religiously  into  two  classes — An- 
glicans and  Nonconformists.  The  Anglicans, 
one  may  say,  are  reformed  Catholics;  the 
Nonconformists,  reformed  Anglicans.  Appar- 
ently all  English  religions — with  the  excep- 
tion, of  course,  of  the  Catholic  religion,which 
is  not  counted — date  from  or  since  the  Re- 
formation. We  know  what  the  Reformation 
means  in  Scotland,  though  the  English  no- 
tion of  it  seems  to  be  a  trifle  vague.  We  also 
know  in  Scotland  what  religion  means.  I 
doubt  if  the  English  have  any  such  know- 
ledge.    One  has  only  to  visit  an  average 

79 


8o        The  Egregious  English 

Anglican  or  Nonconformist  church  on  the 
Sabbath  to  perceive  that  in  England  religion 
is  under  a  cloud  and  has  almost  ceased  to  be 
a  spiritual  matter.  In  the  first  place,  you 
will  notice  that  the  congregation  is  for  the 
most  part  composed  of  women  and  children. 
Englishmen  are  too  busy  or  too  bored  to  go 
to  church  on  the  Sabbath.  What  little  faith, 
what  little  religious  fervour  or  feeling,  they 
ever  possessed  has  been  knocked  out  of  them, 
and  they  no  longer  go  to  church.  And  this 
change  has  been  accomplished,  not  by  the 
failure  of  dogmas,  not  by  the  spread  of  free- 
thought,  not  by  secularists,  anti-clericalists, 
or  philosophers,  but  simply  by  an  indolent 
clergy  on  the  one  hand  and  cheap  railway 
fares  on  the  other.  The  mediocre  preacher 
and  the  new-fangled  English  week-end  have 
emptied  the  churches  of  England's  manhood. 
The  women  and  children  are  left,  a  puling, 
bemused  crowd,  and  to  these  the  English 
shepherds  and  pastors  blate  their  cheap  ritual 
and  read  their  ill-considered  sermons. 

It  is  curious  to  note  how  easily  an  English 


The  Churches  81 

parson  or  Nonconformist  minister  can  make 
a  reputation  for  greatness  as  a  preacher.  Let 
him  be  just  a  little  more  competent  than  the 
average,  and  people  flock  to  hear  him.  I 
doubt  if  there  is  a  really  great  preacher  alive 
in  England  to-day.  Yet  there  are  three  or 
four  who  pass  for  great,  and  who  are  sup- 
posed to  be  in  line  with  St.  Paul,  John  Knox, 
and  Wesley.  To  give  instances  would  be  in- 
vidious, but  I  have  no  hesitation  in  asserting 
that  the  preachments  offered  in  London  at 
the  three  or  four  great  churches  which  are 
supposed  to  enshrine  orators  are,  as  a  rule, 
exceedingly  feeble  efforts,  tricked  out  with 
gauds  and  mannerisms,  packed  with  trite 
sentiment,  and  utterly  devoid  of  doctrine, 
inspiration,  and  value.  There  are  not  three 
bishops  on  the  English  bench  that  can  fur- 
nish forth  a  sermon  worth  going  fifty  yards 
to  hear.  There  is  not  a  Nonconformist  min- 
ister who  has  a  soul  above  stodginess,  con- 
vention, and  a  convenient  if  threadbare 
Scriptural  tag.  The  Salvation  Army,  per- 
haps, have  the  fervour  and  the  courage,  but 


82         The  Egregious  English 

they  lack  wisdom,  and  they  have  no  art. 
The  Congregationahsts  have  some  of  the 
wisdom  and  a  touch  of  the  art,  but  they  have 
no  fervour.  Indeed,  wherever  you  turn  you 
find  that  the  recognised  EngUsh  reHgionists 
have  given  themselves  up  to  a  decadent, 
Hebraic  emotion,  and  let  the  solid  things  of 
the  spirit — the  Hebraic  culture,  the  Hebraic 
vision,  the  Hebraic  passion — pass  by  them. 
Gradually  the  churches  of  this  remarkable 
country  are  ceasing  to  have  anything  to  do 
with  religion  at  all.  "  Religion  be  hanged!'* 
say  those  that  run  them.  "Religion  no 
longer  appeals  to  the  wayward,  stony- 
hearted, over-driven,  half-educated  English 
populace.  What  is  wanted  is  social  bright- 
ness and  warmth,  the  religion  of  brotherhood 
and  the  full  belly ;  so  that  we  will  give  magic- 
lantern  entertainments  in  our  churches  on 
the  Lord's  Day,  we  will  go  in  'bald-headed' 
for  pleasant  Simday  afternoons,  hot  coffee 
and  veal-and-ham  pies,  and  screws  of  tobacco 
given  away  at  the  doors,  wrapped  up  in  a 
tract,  which  you  are  at  liberty  either  to  read 


The  Churches  83 

or  to  light  your  pipe  with."  As  for  the 
English  priests  that  had  the  authority  of 
God,  they  are  no  longer  sure  whether  they 
have  that  authority  or  not.  Of  course,  they 
believe  they  have  it  in  a  sacerdotal,  canonical, 
and  private  way ;  but  not  one  of  them  dare 
stand  up  and  swear  by  his  powers  publicly. 
The  bishops  are  all  for  peace  and  quietness. 
"  If  you  please,  we  are  your  friends,  and  not 
your  masters,"  say  they  to  their  clergy;  and 
their  clergy,  to  use  an  English  vulgarism, 
"wink  the  other  eye."  And  the  clergy,  too, 
in  turn  are  the  friends  and  not  the  masters 
of  common  men;  they  are  so  much  your 
friends,  indeed,  that,  providing  you  mount  a 
silk  hat  on  Sunday  and  put  a  penny  on  the 
plate,  you  can  depend  upon  a  friendly  shake 
of  the  hand  and  a  kindly  grin  of  recognition 
six  days  in  the  week,  even  though  you  hap- 
pen to  be  a  bookmaker  or  the  keeper  of  a 
bucket-shop.  For  the  Nonconformist  clergy, 
if  clergy  they  may  be  called,  they  speak 
humorously  at  tea-parties,  they  enter  into 
hat-trimming  competitions  at  bazaars,  and 


84         The  Egregious  English 

they  play  principal  guest  at  the  tables  of 
over-fed  tradesmen.  There  is  not  a  man 
amongst  them  who  can  say  bo  to  a  goose. 
There  is  not  a  man  amongst  them  who  as  a 
social  unit  is  worth  the  ;£i5o  a  year  and  a 
manse,  with  £io  per  annum  for  each  child, 
that  a  glozing,  unintellectual  English  con- 
gregation hands  over  to  him.  Out  of  the 
ease  and  security  and  respectability  and  dolce 
far  niente  which  the  Church  of  England  pro- 
vides for  a  considerable  proportion  of  her 
priests,  she  has  managed  to  evolve  a  few 
scholars,  a  few  men  of  letters,  perhaps  an  odd 
saint  or  two,  and  an  odd  man  of  tempera- 
ment and  mark.  But  what  have  the  Eng- 
lish Nonconformists  produced?  Dr.  Horton 
and  Dr.  Parker,  and  that  G.  R.  Sims  of  re- 
ligionists, the  Rev.  Hugh  Price  Hughes.  To 
this  distinguished  triumvirate — though  the 
English  Nonconformists  will  hold  up  pious 
hands  of  horror  at  the  notion — one  may  add 
that  valiant  thumper  of  the  pulpit  drum., 
General  Booth,  who  is  doing  a  work  in  re- 
ligious decadence  and  bathoticism  which  it 


The  Churches  85 

will  take  centuries  to  undo.  Want  of  heart 
and  want  of  mind,  coupled  with  the  blessed 
spirit  of  tolerance,  have  indeed  played  havoc 
with  the  English  Churches. 

The  loosening  of  the  grip  of  the  Church 
on  English  society  has,  of  course,  not  been 
without  its  results  on  Enghsh  morals  and  on 
English  society  at  large.  There  is  a  general 
feeling  abroad  that  religion  is  played  out, 
that  the  system  of  Hebrew  ethics  which  has 
been  drilled  into  the  English  blood  by  genera- 
tions of  the  faithful  was  all  very  well  for  the 
faithful,  but  is  altogether  impracticable  and 
out  of  harmony  with  the  present  intelligent 
times.  You  will  find  Englishmen  now- 
adays complaining  that  the  taint  of  spiritu- 
alism, ascetism,  and  ethical  faith  which  they 
have  inherited  from  their  people  is  a  source 
of  hindrance  to  them  in  the  matter  of  their 
commercial  or  social  progress,  and  their  lives 
are  spent  in  an  endeavour  to  eradicate  or  to 
triumph  over  that  taint.  The  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  could  not  run  a  tea-shop  by  the 
rules  laid  down  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount, 


86        The  Egregious  English 

they  will  tell  you;  and,  what  is  worse,  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  agrees  with  them. 
"  Take  all  thou  hast,  and  give  it  to  the  poor" 
is  out  of  the  question  even  for  Dr.  Horton. 
Since  those  blessed  words  were  said,  we  are 
told,  the  Poor  Law  has  sprung  up ;  we  give 
all  that  is  necessary  for  pauperism  in  the 
poor-rate;  and,  thanks  to  the  excellence  of 
our  social  system,  it  is  now  impossible  for 
man,  woman,  or  child  to  die  of  starvation, 
provided  only  that  they  will  work.  I  have 
heard  it  stated  by  an  English  Nonconformist 
minister  that  his  chief  complaint  against  the 
Roman  Catholic  community  in  his  district 
was  their  habit  of  being  over-liberal  to  the 
poor.  ''No  man  is  refused,"  observed  my 
Nonconformist  friend,  "no  matter  how  dis- 
solute or  idle  or  irreligious  he  may  be." 

Then  in  the  large  question  of  the  employ- 
ment of  human  flesh  and  blood  to  make 
money  for  you,  the  modem  Englishman  finds 
that  he  must  either  tear  the  effects  of  his 
religious  bringing-up  out  of  his  heart,  or 
forego  the  possibility  of  becoming  really  rich, 


The  Churches  87 

don't  you  know.  It  is  all  a  matter  of  supply 
and  demand;  and  if  the  mass  of  humanity 
live  starved  lives  and  die  daily  in  order  that 
I  may  be  fat  and  warm  and  cultured  and 
possessed  of  surpluses  at  banks,  it  is  not  my 
fault.  You  must  really  blame  supply  and 
demand.  With  this  fine  phrase  on  his  lips, 
the  English  capitalist  confutes  all  the  philo- 
sophies and  sets  his  foot  on  the  majority  of 
the  decencies  of  life.  Of  course,  I  shall  be  told 
that  the  prince  and  chief  of  all  hide-bound 
industrial  capitalists  is  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie, 
who  happens  to  be  a  Scot.  And  I  cheerfully 
admit  that  Mr.  Carnegie  is  a  very  serious 
case  in  point.  But  for  our  one  Mr.  Carnegie, 
the  English  have  fifty  Mr.  Camegies.  They 
may  not  be  so  rich  or  so  famous;  but  there 
they  are,  and  the  blood  and  spirit  of  the  Eng- 
lish people  suffer  accordingly.  The  religion 
of  the  wealthy  does  not  prevent  them  from 
grinding  the  face  of  the  poor ;  and  the  relig- 
ion of  the  middle  classes  is  of  pretty  much 
the  same  order.  It  is  at  the  hands  of  the 
English  middle  classes  that  the  English  poor 


88         The  Egregious  English 

suffer  a  further  and  a  bitterer  depredation. 
For  when  you  have  earned  money  hardly, 
you  want  good  goods  for  it ;  and  the  EngUsh 
middle  classes,  who  are  nearly  all  shop- 
keepers, either  directly  or  indirectly,  make  a 
point  of  palming  off  on  you  the  very  worst 
goods  the  law  will  allow  them  to  sell. 

And,  in  spite  of  all,  the  churches  continue 
to  open  their  doors,  new  churches  continue 
to  be  built,  million-pound  funds  are  raised, 
the  missionary  speeds  over  the  blue  wave 
to  the  succour  of  the  'eathen,  and  English 
women  and  children  have  their  pleasant  Sun- 
day afternoons,  and  bishops  keep  high-step- 
ping horses ;  Church  and  State  are  grappled 
together  with  hooks  of  steel,  and  England  is 
a  Christian  country.  Till  the  churches  get 
out  of  their  slippers  and  their  sloth  and  their 
tea-bibbing  and  their  tolerance,  matters  will 
go  on  in  the  same  old  futile,  scandalous  way. 
If  they  are  to  have  charge  and  direction  of 
the  soul  of  man,  they  must  remember  that 
the  soul  of  man  is  a  greater  thing  than  ease, 
and  a  greater  thing  than  the  Church;   they 


The  Churches  89 

must  not  play  with  the  immortal  part  of 
humanity,  and  they  must  not  trifle  with  the 
things  which  they  believe  to  be  of  God.  In 
no  other  country  save  England  would  such 
churches  and  such  priests  as  the  English 
now  possess  be  tolerated  or  supported;  it 
is  the  English  decadence  which  has  rendered 
Englishmen  blind  to  the  stupidity  and  ban- 
ality of  their  pastors  and  spiritual  guides, 
and  it  is  the  English  easy-heartedness  which 
permits  the  game  of  cant  and  cadge  and 
sham  to  go  on  tmchecked. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   POLITICIAN 

The  flower  and  exemplar  of  well-nigh 
everything  that  is  choicely  and  brutally  Eng- 
lish may  be  summed  up  in  the  English  poli- 
tician. Such  a  tub-thumper,  such  a  master 
of  claptrap  and  the  arts  and  feints  and 
fetches  of  oratory,  has  never  been  known 
before  since  the  world  began.  He  is  Eng- 
lish, and  therefore  he  knows  his  business. 
He  has  made  a  study  of  it  as  a  business,  and 
without  regard  to  its  more  serious  issues. 
His  position  is,  that,  if  he  would  do  himself 
well,  he  must  tie  himself  hand  and  foot  to 
some  party,  and  serve  that  party  through 
thick  and  thin.  Then  in  the  end,  and  with 
good  luck,  will  come  reward.  You  may  be 
bom  in  a  chandler's  shop.  By  birth,  there- 
90 


The  Politician  91 

fore,  you  belong  to  the  very  lower  English 
middle  class.  Through  the  practice  of  a 
number  of  commercial  virtues,  and  with  the 
help  of  considerable  speculation  outside  your 
own  business,  you  become  wealthy.  Now, 
wealth  without  honour  is  nothing  to  an  Eng- 
lishman. He  cannot  brook  that  his  wealth, 
his  shining,  glorious  superfluity,  should  be 
hidden  under  a  bushel.  Therefore  he  seeks 
municipal  honours;  he  becomes  a  town 
coimcillor,  an  alderman,  a  mayor  even. 

But  these,  after  all,  are  not  the  summits; 
they  lead  at  best  only  to  a  common  knight- 
hood, and  any  fool  can  get  knighted  if  he 
wants  to.  So  you  determine  to  seek  Parlia- 
mentary honours.  You  subscribe  liberally 
to  the  funds  of  your  party,  and  by-and- 
by  a  constituency  is  found  for  you  to 
contest.  You  lose  the  fight  and  subscribe 
again;  another  constituency  is  found  for 
you,  and  you  win  by  the  skin  of  your  teeth 
or  with  a  plumping  majority,  as  the  case 
may  be.  You  are  now  a  full-blown  member 
of  Parliament;   it  is  worth  the  money  and 


92         The  Egregious  English 

much  better  than  being  a  mayor.  Up  to 
this  time  you  have  been  an  orator  of  sorts. 
You  have  held  forth  from  schoolroom  plat- 
forms and  the  tops  of  waggons  what  time 
the  assembled  populace  shouted  and  threw 
up  its  sweaty  nightcaps.  You  have  been 
carried  shoulder  high  behind  brass  bands  ren- 
dering See,  the  Conquering  Hero  Comes.  Now 
however,  you  are  really  in  Parliament;  and 
for  the  nonce — for  several  years,  in  fact — you 
must  give  up  talking.  There  is  plenty  for 
you  to  do;  you  may  put  questions  on  the 
paper,  you  may  get  a  look  in  at  committee 
work,  you  may  show  electors  round  the 
Houses,  and  you  may  go  on  subscribing  lib- 
erally to  the  party  funds.  When  you  have 
subscribed  enough,  it  is  just  within  the 
bounds  of  possibility  that  the  heads  of  the 
party — the  Front  Bench  people,  as  it  were — 
will  begin  to  discover  that  there  is  virtue  in 
you.  You  will  be  encouraged  to  make  a 
speech  or  two  at  the  slackest  part  of  debates, 
and  some  fine  day  you  may  be  entrusted 
with  the  fortunes  of  a  little  Bill  which  your 


The  Politician  93 

party  wishes  to  rush  through.  All  the  while 
you  are  subscribing  liberally  to  the  party 
funds.  After  many  years,  when  you  are 
least  expecting  it,  the  bottom  seems  to  fall 
out  of  the  universe — ^that  is  to  say,  there  is 
a  General  Election.  You  have  to  fight  your 
seat;  you  win;  you  come  nobly  back;  be- 
hold, your  party  is  in  power.  Then  comes 
the  grand  moment  of  your  life.  You  are 
shovelled  into  the  Cabinet  on  account  of 
services  rendered.  From  this  point,  if  you 
possess  any  ability  at  all,  you  can  have 
things  pretty  much  your  own  way;  and  if 
your  ambition  has  been  to  hear  yourself 
called  *'My  lord"  before  you  die,  and  to  see 
your  wife  in  the  Peeresses'  Gallery  on  great  oc- 
casions, and  your  sons  swanking  about  town 
with  **Hon."  before  their  names,  you  can 
manage  it.  It  is  a  slow  job,  and  it  involves 
many  years  of  hard  work  and  lavish  expend- 
iture; but  it  is  politically  possible  in  Eng- 
land for  a  man  to  be  bom  on  the  flags  and  to 
die  properly  set  forth  in  Burke  and  Debrett. 
I  do  not  say  for  a  moment  that  the  end 


94        The  Egregious  English 

and  aim  of  every  English  politician  is  the 
peerage;  but  I  do  say  that,  as  a  rule,  his 
labours  are  directed  towards  some  end  of 
honour  or  emolument,  and  seldom  or  never 
to  the  good  of  the  State.  It  is  ambition,  and 
not  patriotism,  that  fires  his  bosom;  it  is 
self -aggrandisement,  and  not  a  desire  for  the 
welfare  of  the  English  people,  that  keeps  him 
going;  and  it  is  party,  and  not  principle, 
that  guides  and  rules  his  legislative  actions. 
Of  course,  the  great  art  of  being  a  politician 
is  to  hide  these  facts  from  the  public.  If 
you  went  down  to  your  constituency  like  an 
honest  man  and  said,  "Gentlemen,  I  wish 
you  to  return  me  to  Parliament  in  order  that 
I  may  make  a  high  position  for  myself,  in 
order  that  I  may  become  a  man  of  rank  and 
the  founder  of  a  family,"  your  constituency 
would  hurl  dead  cats  at  you.  Therefore  you 
go  down  with  an  altogether  different  tale: 
"  I  am  going  to  the  House  of  Commons,  gen- 
tlemen, in  your  interests  and  not  in  mine. 
It  will  cost  me  large  sums  of  money ;  besides 
which,  as  your  member,  I  shall  be  expected 


The  Politician  95 

to  subscribe  to  all  the  local  cricket  clubs. 
But  I  have  the  best  interests  of  Muckington 
at  heart;  and,  if  you  honour  me  by  mak- 
ing me  your  representative,  money  is  no 
object." 

It  is  a  wonderful  business,  and  a  great  and 
a  glorious.  One  stands  in  astonishment  be- 
fore the  bright  English  intelligence  which 
takes  so  much  on  promise  and  gets  so  little 
performed.  An  English  party  never  goes 
into  power  with  the  intention  of  doing  more 
than  half  of  what  it  has  promised  to  do.  At 
election  times  its  great  business  is  to  capture 
votes :  these  must  be  had  at  any  price  short 
of  rank  bribery.  And,  once  landed  with  the 
blest,  the  party  immediately  settles  down, 
not  to  the  work  of  carrying  out  its  promises, 
but  to  the  far  more  serious  business  of  keep- 
ing itself  in  power.  From  the  point  of  view 
of  the  careless  lay-observer,  the  House  of 
Commons  is  an  assemblage  for  the  discussion 
of  Imperial  affairs,  with  a  view  to  their  being 
managed  in  the  best  possible  way.  To  the 
politician  it  is  just  an  arena  in  which  two 


96        The  Egregious  English 

sets  of  greedy  men  meet  to  annoy,  thwart, 
ridicule,  and  bring  about  the  downfall  of 
each  other. 

The  amount  of  interest  the  Englishman  is 
supposed  to  take  in  this  amazing  assemblage 
and  its  doings  makes  it  plain  that  the  Eng- 
lishman himself  is  well-nigh  as  foolish  and 
well-nigh  as  oblique  as  the  person  whom  he 
elects  to  represent  him.  Next  to  royalty 
itself  there  is  nobody  in  England  who  can 
command  so  much  attention  and  such  a 
prominent  place  in  the  picture  as  the  poli- 
tician. If  he  be  a  Cabinet  Minister  of  any 
standing,  it  is  impossible  for  him  to  walk 
through  the  streets  either  of  London  or  of 
any  of  the  English  provincial  towns  without 
being  immediately  recognised  and  ''respect- 
fully saluted";  whereas,  if  he  happens  to 
have  come  to  any  metropolitan  district  or 
provincial  town  on  political  business  bent, 
he  may  depend  upon  being  received  at  the 
proper  point  by  the  local  authorities,  sup- 
ported by  a  guard  of  honour  of  the  local 
Volunteers,  and  he  may  also  depend  upon 


The  Politician  97 

more  or  less  of  an  ovation  on  his  way  to  and 
from  the  place  of  meeting. 

Year  in  and  year  out,  too,  the  illustrated 
papers  of  every  degree  blossom  with  his  latest 
photograph.  Mr.  So-and-so  in  his  new  motor- 
car ;  Mr.  So-and-so  playing  golf ;  Mr.  So-and-so 
and  the  King;  Mr.  So-and-so  addressing  the 
mob  from  the  railway  train, — these  are  pic- 
tures in  which  every  Englishman  has  delighted 
from  his  youth  up,  and  in  which  he  will  always 
find  great  artistic  and  moral  satisfaction.  As 
for  the  journals  which  live  out  of  the  personal 
paragraph,  they  must  give — or  imagine  they 
must  give — ^pride  of  place  to  the  politician,  or 
perish.  Little  anecdotes  of  the  sayings  and 
doings  of  the  politically  great  are  always  mar- 
ketable. It  is  not  necessary  that  they  should 
have  the  slightest  foundation  in  truth;  but 
they  must  be  neat,  reasonably  amusing,  and 
flattering  to  the  personage  involved. 

It  is  when  one  turns  to  the  English  daily 
papers,  however,  that  one  begins  to  under- 
stand what  an  extraordinary  hold  the  polit- 
ical interest   has  upon   the   English  public 


9^        The  Egregious  English 

mind.  It  is  well  known  that,  in  the  main, 
the  debates  in  the  House  of  Commons  are 
quite  dull,  colourless,  and  somnolent  func- 
tions. Half  of  them  take  place  in  the  pre- 
sence only  of  the  Speaker  and  a  quorum. 
That  is  to  say,  nine  nights  out  of  ten,  mem- 
bers spend  the  greater  portion  of  their  time 
in  the  smoke-rooms,  dining-rooms,  and  lob- 
bies, and  not  in  the  House  itself,  the  simple 
reason  being  that,  as  a  rule,  the  debates  are 
not  interesting.  When  some  reputable  cham- 
pion of  either  party  gets  on  his  legs,  or  when 
some  wag  is  up,  members  manage  to  attend 
in  force;  but  it  is  only  at  these  moments 
that  they  do  so.  Yet,  if  you  pick  up  an 
English  morning  newspaper,  you  will  find 
six  columns  of  that  sheet  devoted  to  a  report 
of  the  proceedings  in  Parliament;  another 
three  columns  of  descriptive  matter  bearing 
on  the  same  proceedings;  and,  out  of  four 
or  five  leaders,  three  at  least  deal  with  the 
political  question  of  the  moment.  Even 
when  Parliament  is  not  sitting,  the  first 
leader  is  never  by  any  chance  other  than 


The  Politician  99 

political.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the 
dull  English  mind,  nothing  more  important 
than  a  political  happening  can  happen  in 
this  world.  Mr.  Somebody  has  called  Mr. 
Somebody  else  a  liar  across  the  floor  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  It  is  essential  for 
the  well-being  of  the  country  at  large  that  the 
episode  should  be  reported  with  a  separate 
subhead  and  great  circumstance  in  the  Par- 
liamentary report ;  that  the  scene  should  be 
described  by  the  lively  and  picturesque  pen 
of  the  writer  of  the  Parliamentary  sketch; 
that  the  appearance  of  the  gentleman  who 
called  the  other  gentleman  a  liar  should  be 
dwelt  upon  in  the  notes;  that  instances  of 
other  gentlemen  having  called  gentlemen 
liars  across  the  floor  of  the  House  should  also 
be  given  in  the  notes;  and,  finally,  that  a 
rotund  and  windy  leader  should  be  written, 
wherein  is  discussed  gravely  the  general  ad- 
visability of  gentlemen  calling  other  gentle- 
men liars  across  the  floor  of  the  House; 
wherein  one  is  assured  that,  in  spite  of  occa- 
sional regrettable  instances  of  the  kind,  the 


loo       The  Egregious  English 

English  Parliament  is  the  most  decorous  and 
dignified  assemblage  under  the  sun;  and 
wherein  we  cannot  refrain  from  paying  our 
tribute  of  respectful  admiration  to  the  Right 
Honourable  the  Speaker,  whose  tact,  good 
sense,  and  gentleman-like  spirit,  coupled  with 
the  firmness,  resolution,  and  knowledge  of 
the  procedure  of  the  House  becoming  to  his 
high  position,  invariably  enable  him  to  still 
the  storm  and  to  repress  the  angry  passions 
of  our  heated  legislators  before  any  great 
harm  has  been  done.  So  that  a  gentleman 
who  calls  another  gentleman  a  liar  across  the 
floor  of  the  House  of  Commons  really  ren- 
ders a  great  service  to  Englishmen,  inasmuch 
as  he  provides  them  with  a  gratuitous  enter- 
tainment, about  which  they  may  read,  talk, 
and  argue  for  at  least  twenty-four  hours. 

Recognising  their  own  love  of  politics  and 
political  strife,  and  knowing  in  their  hearts 
that  the  talk  in  the  House  of  Commons — not 
to  mention  the  House  of  Lords — is,  gener- 
ally speaking,  of  the  flattest  and  flabbiest, 
one  would  imagine  that  the  wise  English 


The  Politician      '  '    ' '  ibi ' 

would  be  at  some  pains  to  take  measures 
calculated  to  brighten  up  the  Pariiamentary 
debates  and  render  them  of  real  interest. 
But  no  such  precautions  are  taken.  When 
a  would-be  member  of  Parliament  is  heckled, 
he  is  never  by  any  chance  asked  if  he  is  pre- 
pared, at  the  psychological  moment,  to  pull 
the  nose  of  one  of  the  right  honourable  gentle- 
men opposite.  Any  member  of  Parliament 
who,  in  the  middle  of  a  dull  debate,  would 
walk  across  the  floor  and  box  the  ears  of, 
say,  Mr.  Balfour,  or  Lord  Hugh  Cecil,  would 
thereby  earn  for  himself  the  distinction  of 
being  the  best-discussed  and  best-described 
man  in  England  for  quite  half  a  week.  Con- 
sidering the  small  amoimt  of  exertion  re- 
quired for  such  a  proceeding,  and  the  very 
large  amount  of  notoriety  which  would  accrue 
to  the  person  who  ventured  on  it,  one  won- 
ders that  it  has  never  been  done. 

In  spite  of  the  abnormal  share  of  pub- 
licity and  applause  which  is  extended  to  the 
English  politician,  however,  the  solemn  fact 
remains  that  he  is  seldom  a  person  of  any 


:i02;'c    The  Egregious  English 

real  force,  capacity,  understanding,  or  char- 
acter. Commonplace,  mediocre,  insincere, 
inept,  are  the  epithets  which  best  describe 
him.  He  passes  through  the  legislative 
chamber  or  chambers,  says  his  say  in  undis- 
tinguished speeches,  casts  his  vote,  earns  his 
place,  his  pension,  or  his  peerage,  and  passes 
beyond  our  echo  and  our  hail.  The  daily 
papers  manufacture  for  him  an  obituary 
notice  varying  in  length  from  five  lines  to  a 
couple  of  columns,  and  nobody  wants  to  hear 
anything  more  about  him.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  he  has  left  the  world  neither  wiser  nor 
wittier  nor  happier  than  he  found  it.  If  he 
has  made  one  phrase  or  uttered  one  senti- 
ment that  sticks  in  men's  minds,  he  is  for- 
tunate. Neither  history  nor  posterity  will 
have  anything  to  say  about  him,  though  in 
his  day  he  kicked  up  some  fuss  and  took  up 
a  lot  of  room.  In  short,  politics  as  a  career 
in  England  is  not  a  career  for  solid,  serious 
men.  It  merely  serves  the  turn  of  the  spe- 
cious, the  shallow,  the  incompetent,  and  the 
vainglorious. 


CHAPTER  XI 

POETS 

It  may  be  set  down  as  an  axiom  that  a 
nation  which  is  in  the  proper  enjoyment  of 
all  its  faculties,  which  is  healthy,  wealthy, 
wise,  and  properly  conditioned,  must  be  pro- 
ducing a  certain  amount  of  poetry.  From 
the  beginning  this  has  been  so ;  it  will  be  so 
to  the  end.  When  England  was  at  her  high- 
est, when  the  best  in  her  was  having  full 
play,  she  produced  poets.  Right  down  into 
the  Victorian  Era  she  went  on  producing 
them.  Then  she  took  to  the  Stock  Exchange 
and  an  ostentatious  way  of  life,  and  the  sup- 
ply of  poets  fell  off.  If  we  except  Mr.  Swin- 
burne, who  does  not  belong  rightfully  to  this 
present  time,  there  is  not  a  poet  of  any  parts 
exercising  his  function  in  England  to-day. 
103 


I04      The  Egregious  English 

Furthermore,  any  bookseller  will  tell  you 
that  the  demand  for  poetry-books  by  new 
writers  has  practically  ceased  to  exist. 

These  statements  will  be  called  sweeping 
by  a  certain  school  of  critics,  and  I  shall  be 
asked  to  cast  my  eye  round  the  English  nest 
of  singing-birds,  and  to  answer  and  say 
whether  Mr.  So-and-so  be  not  a  poet,  and 
Mr.  So-and-so,  and  Mr.  So-and-so,  and  Mr. 
So-and-so.  I  shall  also  be  asked  to  say  if  I 
am  prepared  to  deny  that  of  Mr.  So-and-so's 
last  volume  of  verse  three  hundred  copies 
were  actually  sold  to  the  booksellers.  For 
the  propounders  of  such  questions  I  have  one 
answer — namely,  it  may  be  so. 

In  the  meantime  let  us  do  our  best  to  find 
an  English  poet  who  is  worth  the  name,  and 
who  is  prescriptively  entitled  to  be  men- 
tioned in  the  category  which  begins  with 
Chaucer  and  ends  with  Mr.  Swinburne.  Shall 
we  try  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling?  Tested  by 
sales  and  the  amoimt  of  dust  he  has  man- 
aged to  kick  up,  Mr.  Kipling  should  be  a 
poet  of  parts.     He  is  still  young,  and,  hap- 


Poets  105 

pily,  among  the  living;  but  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  as  a  poet  he  has  already  out- 
lived his  reputation.  Two  years  ago  he 
could  set  the  English-speaking  nations  hum- 
ming or  reciting  whatever  he  chose  to  put 
into  metre.  Some  of  his  little  things  looked 
like  lasting.  Already  the  majority  of  them 
are  forgotten.  To  the  next  generation,  if  he 
be  known  at  all,  he  will  be  known  as  the 
author  of  three  pieces  —  Recessional,  the 
U  Envoi  appended  to  Life's  Handicap,  and 
Mandalay.  What  is  to  become  of  such 
verses  as  the  following? 

'Ave  you  'card  o*  the  Widow  at  Windsor, 
With  a  hairy  gold  crown  on  'er  'ead? 

She  'as  ships  on  the  foam — she  'as  millions  at  'ome, 
An'  she  pays  tis  poor  beggars  in  red. 
('Ow  poor  beggars  in  red!) 

There's  'er  nick  on  the  cavalry  'orses, 
There's  'er  mark  on  the  medical  stores — 

An'  'er  troopers  you'll  find  with  a  fair  wind  be'ind 
That  takes  us  to  various  wars. 

(Poor  beggars !  barbarious  wars !) 

Then  'ere 's  to  the  Widow  at  Windsor, 
An*  'ere's  to  the  stores  and  the  guns, 

The  men  an'  the  'orses  what  makes  up  the  forces 
O'  Missis  Victorier's  sons. 

(Poor  beggars!  Victorier's  sons!) 


io6       The  Egregious  English 

At  the  time  of  their  appearance  these  lines 
and  the  Hke  of  them  were  vastly  admired; 
everybody  read  them,  most  people  praised 
them.  They  were  supposed  to  stir  the  Eng- 
lish blood  like  a  blast  of  martial  trumpets. 
Here  at  length  was  the  poet  England  had 
been  waiting  for.  There  could  be  no  mis- 
take about  him ;  he  had  the  authentic  voice, 
the  incommunicable  fire,  the  master-touch. 
He  had  come  to  stay.  At  the  present  mo- 
ment the  bulk  of  his  metrical  work  is  just 
about  as  dead  and  forgotten  as  the  coster- 
songs  of  yesteryear.  He  has  not  even  made 
a  cult ;  nobody  quotes  him,  nobody  believes 
in  him  as  a  poetical  master,  nobody  wants 
to  hear  any  more  of  him.  His  imitators  have 
all  gone  back  to  the  imitation  of  better  men. 
If  a  copy  of  verses  have  a  flavour  of  Kipling 
about  it  nowadays,  editors  drop  it  as  they 
would  drop  a  hot  coal.  So  much  for  the 
poet  of  empire,  the  poet  of  the  people,  the 
metrical  patron  of  Thomas  Atkins,  Esq. 

Another  poet  of  empire — Mr.  W.  E.  Hen- 
ley— has  fared  very  little  better.     ''What 


Poets  107 

can  I  do  for  England?"  is,  I  believe,  still  in 
request  among  the  makers  of  a  certain  class 
of  anthology;  but  English  poetry  in  the 
bulk  is  just  the  same  as  if  Mr.  Henley  had 
never  been.  Even  the  balderdash  about 
"my  indomitable  soul"  has  fallen  out  of  the 
usus  loquendi  of  young  men's  Christian  as- 
sociations and  young  men's  debating  so- 
cieties. The  Song  of  the  Sword  is  sung  no 
longer;  For  England's  Sake  has  gone  the 
way  of  all  truculent  war-poetry ;  and  out  of 
Hawthorn  and  Lavender  perhaps  a  couple  of 
lyrics  remain.  Mr.  Henley  attacked  Bums 
when  Bums  had  been  a  century  dead.  Who 
will  consider  it  worth  while  to  attack  Mr. 
Henley  in,  say,  the  year  2002? 

Possibly  the  real,  true  English  poet  who 
will  in  due  course  put  on  the  laurel  of  Mr. 
Austin  is  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips.  Yet  Mr. 
Stephen  Phillips  is  a  purveyor  of  metrical 
notions  for  the  stage,  and  in  his  last  great 
work — Ulysses — I  find  him  writing  as  follows : 

Athene.  Father,  whose  oath  in  hollow  hell  is  heard, 
Whose  act  is  lightning  after  thunder- word, 


io8       The  Egregious  English 

A  boon !  a  boon !  that  I  compassion  find 
For  one,  the  most  unhappy  of  mankind. 

Zeus.     How  is  he  named? 

Athene.  Ulysses,     He  who  planned 

To  take  the  towered  city  of  Troy-land — 
A  mighty  spearsman,  and  a  seaman  wise, 
A  hunter,  and  at  need  a  lord  of  lies. 
With  woven  wiles  he  stole  the  Trojan  town 
Which  ten  years'  battle  could  not  batter  down: 
Oft  hath  he  made  sweet  sacrifice  to  thee. 

Zeus  (nodding  benevolently).     I  mind  me  of  the  sav- 
oury smell. 

Athene.  Yet  he, 

When  all  the  other  captains  had  won  home. 
Was  whirled  about  the  wilderness  of  foam : 
For  the  wind  and  the  wave  have  driven  him  evermore, 
Mocked  by  the  green  of  some  receding  shore. 
Yet  over  wind  and  wave  he  had  his  will, 
Blistered  and  buffeted,  unbaffled  still. 
Ever  the  snare  was  set,  ever  in  vain — 
The  Lotus  Island  and  the  Siren  strain; 
Through  Scylla  and  Charybdis  hath  he  run, 
Sleeplessly  plunging  to  the  setting  sun. 
Who  hath  so  suffered,  or  so  far  hath  sailed, 
So  much  encountered,  and  so  little  quailed? 

Which  is  exactly  the  kind  of  poetry  one 
requires  for  the  cavern  scene  of  a  New  Year's 
pantomime. 

Possibly,  again,  the  real,  true  English 
poet  is  Mr.  William  Watson,  with  his  tire- 
some mimicry  of  Wordsworth  and  his  high- 


Poets  109 

and-dry  style  of  lyrical  architecture.  Mr. 
Watson  is  believed  to  have  done  great  things, 
but  his  role  now  appears  to  be  one  of  aus- 
tere silence ;  he  is  what  the  old  writers  would 
have  termed  a  costive  poet.  And  if  his 
Collected  Poems  are  to  be  the  end  of  him,  his 
end  will  not  be  long  deferred.  Or,  possibly, 
the  one  and  only  poet  our  England  of  to-day 
would  wish  to  boast  is  Mr.  Arthiur  Symons. 
Mr.  Symons  writes  just  the  kind  of  poetry 
one  might  expect  of  a  versifier  who,  in  early 
youth,  had  loved  a  cigarette-smoking  ballet- 
girl,  and  could  never  bring  himself  to  re- 
press his  passion.  Here  is  a  sample  of  Mr. 
Arthur  Symons  at  his  choicest: 

The  feverish  room  and  that  white  bed, 
The  tumbled  skirts  upon  a  chair, 
The  novel  flung  half  open  where 

Hat,  hair-pins,  puffs,  and  paints  are  spread. 


And  you,  half  dressed  and  half  awake, 
Your  slant  eyes  strangely  watching  me; 
And  I,  who  watch  you  drowsily, 

With  eyes  that,  having  slept  not,  ache: 


no       The  Egregious  English 

This  (need  one  dread?  nay,  dare  one  hope?) 

Will  rise,  a  ghost  of  memory,  if 

Ever  again  my  handkerchief 
Is  scented  with  White  Heliotrope. 

No  doubt,  if  the  English  continue  to  descend 
the  moral  Avemus  at  their  present  rate  of 
speed,  Mr.  Symons  will  become,  by  sheer 
process  of  time,  the  representative  poet  of 
the  nation.  It  is  part  of  a  poet's  duty  to 
look  into  the  future,  and  Mr.  Symons  ap- 
pears to  have  taken  the  next  two  or  three 
generations  of  Englishmen  by  the  forelock. 
May  he  have  the  reward  which  is  his  due ! 

For  the  rest,  they  all  mean  well,  and  they 
all  aim  high ;  but  one  is  afraid  that  nothing 
will  come  of  them.  There  are  Francis 
Thompson,  and  Laurence  Housman,  and 
Henry  Newbolt,  and  Laurence  Binyon,  and 
F.  B.  Money-Coutts,  and  Arthur  Christopher 
Benson,  and  Victor  Plarr — amiable  perform- 
ers all,  but  each  a  standing  example  of  poeti- 
cal shortcoming.  Perhaps  one  ought  not  to 
mention  Mr.  John  Davidson  and  Mr.  W.  B. 
Yeats,  because  Mr.  Davidson  is  a  Scot,  and 
Mr.  Yeats,  putatively,  at  any  rate,  an  Irish- 


Poets  1 1 1 

man.  In  some  respects  these  twain  may  be 
considered  the  pick  of  the  basket.  I  am 
constrained  to  admit,  however,  that  neither 
of  them  has  as  yet  fulfilled  his  earlier  promise. 
So  that,  on  the  whole,  England  is  practi- 
ally  without  poets  of  marked  or  extraordin- 
ary attainments.  The  reason  is  not  far  to 
seek.  She  is  losing  the  breed  of  noble 
bloods;  her  greed,  her  luxuriousness,  her 
excesses,  her  contempt  for  all  but  the  ma- 
terial, are  beginning  to  find  her  out.  Her 
youths,  who  should  be  fired  by  the  brightest 
emotions,  are  bidden  not  to  be  fools,  and 
taught  that  the  whole  duty  of  man  is  to  be 
washed  and  combed  and  financially  success- 
ful. Consequently  that  section  of  English 
adolescence  which,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
begins  with  poetry  and  gladness  very  speed- 
ily throws  up  the  sponge.  Consecration  to 
the  muse  is  no  longer  thought  of  among  Eng- 
lishmen. They  cannot  be  content  to  be 
published  and  take  their  chance.  The  dis- 
mal shibboleth,  ''Poetry  does  not  pay," 
wears  them  all  down.     What  is  the  good  of 


112       The  Egregious  English 

writing  verses  which  bring  you  neither  repu- 
tation nor  emolument?  One  must  live,  and 
to  live  like  a  gentleman  by  honest  toil,  and 
devote  one's  leisure  instead  of  one's  life  to 
poetry,  is  the  better  part.  Meanwhile,  Eng- 
land jogs  along  quite  comfortably.  She  can 
get  Keats  for  a  shilling,  and  Shakespeare  for 
sixpence.  Why  should  she  worry  herself  for 
a  moment  with  the  new  men? 


CHAPTER  XII 

FICTION 

After  much  patient  thinking,  the  Eng- 
lish have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  there 
is  but  one  branch  of  literary  art,  and  that 
its  name  is  Fiction.  And  by  fiction  the 
English  really  mean  the  six-shilling  novel. 
I  do  not  think  it  is  too  much  to  say,  that 
since  the  six-shilling  novel  was  first  thrust 
upon  our  delighted  attention  it  has  never 
brought  within  its  covers  six  shillings'  worth 
of  reading.  The  high  priest  and  the  high 
priestess  who  serve  to  the  right  and  left  of 
the  altar  of  six-shillingism  are,  as  every  one 
knows,  Mr.  Hall  Caine  and  Miss  Marie  Cor- 
elli.  Each  of  them  wears  a  golden  ephod, 
with  a  breastplate  of  jewels  arranged  to 
spell  out  the  magic  figures,  One  Hundred 

8 

113 


114       The  Egregious  English 

Thousand.  All  the  other  priests  of  the 
Tabernacle  look  with  awe  and  envy  upon 
these  two,  because  the  other  priests'  breast- 
plates have  hard  work  to  spell  out  fifty 
thousand,  and  some  of  them  do  not  even 
achieve  one  thousand  five  hundred.  Burnt- 
offerings  of  Caine  and  Corelli  therefore  fill 
the  place  with  savour.  A  pair  of  sorrier 
writers  never  was  on  sea  or  land.  Every- 
body knows  it,  nobody  denies  it,  and  nobody 
seems  sad  about  it.  The  six-shilling  novel 
is  an  established  English  institution.  Caine 
and  Corelli  are  its  prop  and  stay,  and  the 
rest  do  their  best  to  keep  in  the  running  and 
pick  up  the  minor  money-bags. 

The  perusal  of  six-shilling  fiction  is  prac- 
tically a  sort  of  mania.  It  has  seized  in  its 
grip  the  fairest  England  has  to  show,  par- 
ticularly matrons,  the  yotmger  women,  and 
stockbrokers.  For  the  Englishwoman  the 
daily  round  would  lose  its  saltness  did  she 
not  have  handy  the  newest  six-shilling  novel 
by  Mr.  Caine,  Miss  Corelli,  or  the  next  literary 
bawler  in  the  market-place.     There  are  shops 


Fiction  115 

called  ''libraries,"  to  which  the  English- 
woman repairs  for  her  supplies  of  literary 
pabulum.  Here  the  six-shilling  novel  has  a 
great  time.  Strapped  together  in  sixes,  or 
packed  in  boxes  of  dozens,  it  is  handed  forth 
to  the  carriages  of  its  fair  devourers,  and 
taken  right  away  to  its  repose  in  the  cult- 
ured homes  of  Bayswater  and  Kensington. 
From  morning  till  night  many  Englishwomen 
do  little  but  read  this  precious  stuff.  What 
they  get  out  of  it  amounts  in  the  long  run  to 
hysteria  and  anaemia.  It  brings  about  a 
general  deadening  of  the  mind  and  a 
general  jaggedness  of  the  emotions,  coupled 
with  an  utter  incapacity  to  take  any  save  an 
exaggerated  view  of  the  facts  of  life.  Dis- 
content, disillusionment,  ennui,  boredom, 
ill-temper,  a  sharp  tongue,  and  a  cynical 
spirit  are  other  symptoms  which  the  six- 
shilling  novel  is  prone  to  evoke.  The  habit 
is  worse  than  opium  or  haschisch  or  tea 
cigarettes.  It  is  just  the  devil,  and  that  is 
all  you  need  say  about  it.  The  persons  em- 
ployed in  the  opium  traffic  are  supposed  to 


ii6       The  Egregious  English 

be  very  wicked.  To  my  mind,  the  persons 
employed  in  the  fiction  traffic  are  as  wicked 
as  wicked  can  be.  When  the  foul  disease 
began  first  to  make  its  ravages  obvious,  there 
were  not  wanting  persons  who  would  have 
checked  it  and  provided  remedies  for  it. 
These  persons  squeaked  somewhat,  and 
nothing  more  has  been  heard  of  them.  So 
the  thing  goes  on  unrestrained,  and  even  ap- 
plauded by  press  and  pulpit  alike;  and  the 
Englishwoman  has  become  a  confi^rmed,  in- 
veterate, and  incurable  fiction-reader.  If  a 
man  have  an  enemy  to  whom  he  would  do 
an  abiding  injury,  let  him  persuade  that 
enemy  to  obtain  the  six  more  popular  six- 
shilling  novels  of  the  moment,  and  read 
them  through.  If  the  man's  enemy  sticks 
to  his  bargain — at  which,  however,  he  will 
probably  shy  in  the  middle  of  the  second 
volume — the  chances  are  that  he  gets  up 
from  that  reading  a  broken  and  spiritless 
man.  His  brain  will  be  as  saggy  as  a  sponge 
full  of  treacle,  and  his  vision  as  unreliable 
as  that  of  the  alcoholist  who  always  saw  two 


Fiction  117 

cabs,  and  invariably  got  into  the  one  that 
was  not  there. 

Seriously,  however,  what  is  there  about 
this  English  fiction — or,  for  that  matter, 
about  Scottish  fiction — that  men  and  women 
should  buy  it  and  devour  it  to  the  exclusion 
of  all  other  literary  fare?  It  is  ill- written,  it 
is  not  original,  it  is  not  like  life,  it  is  not  beau- 
tiful, it  is  not  inspiring,  it  does  not  touch  the 
profound  emotions,  it  means  nothing,  and  it 
ends  nowhere.  The  reason  of  its  popularity 
is,  that  it  appeals  to  an  indolent  habit  of 
mind,  and,  as  a  general  rule,  is  calculated  to 
excite  the  passions,  and  particularly  to  open 
up  questions  which  experience  has  shown  to 
be  best  left  alone.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten, 
where  a  popular  work  of  fiction  is  concerned, 
it  is  always  possible  to  put  one's  finger  on 
the  chapter  or  passages  on  which  its  popul- 
arity is  based ;  and  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten 
that  chapter  or  those  passages  have  to  do 
with  sexual  matters.  The  questions  which 
arise  out  of  the  relation  of  man  and  woman 
are  no  doubt  vitally  important  and   most 


ii8       The  Egregious  English 

interesting ;  but  that  they  should  be  discussed 
in  an  unscientific,  irresponsible,  and  catch- 
penny way  by  everybody  who  can  trail  a 
pen  is  something  of  a  scandal.  If  an  author 
can  succeed  in  inventing  a  sexual  situation 
which  could  not  by  any  possible  chance 
exist  for  a  moment  in  real  life,  or  if  he  can 
put  a  glow  and  a  gloss  on  the  tritenesses  of 
love  and  lust,  his  success  as  a  fictionist  is  to 
all  intents  and  purposes  assured.  What  is 
sometimes  spoken  of  as  wholesome  fiction 
scarcely  exists — anyway,  nobody  reads  it. 
It  is  the  carefully  constructed  book  about 
sex  that  sells  and  is  read.  Such  a  book  need 
not  be  flagrant,  as  was  once  thought  to  be 
the  case ;  it  can  be  *'  a  work  of  art  '* — a  thing 
of  veiled  suggestion,  delicate,  unobjection- 
able, and  seemingly  meet  to  be  read. 

One  has  hesitation  in  asserting  that  such 
books  ought  not  to  be  written  or  ought  not 
to  be  circulated.  It  is  difficult  to  justify 
any  attitude  of  intolerance  in  such  a  mat- 
ter ;  yet  the  fact  remains  that  the  maids  and 
matrons  of  England,  together  with  the  men 


Fiction  119 

who  have  the  leisure  and  sufficient  lack  of 
brains  to  read  fiction,  are  being  stuffed 
season  by  season  and  year  by  year  with 
about  the  most  undesirable  kind  of  sexual 
philosophy  that  could  well  be  placed  before 
them.  Of  any  Englishwoman  of  the  leisured 
class  above  the  age  of  sixteen  years  it  may 
be  said,  as  was  said  of  the  late  Professor 
Jowett  in  a  different  sense,  "What  I  don't 
know  is  n't  knowledge."  And  the  instructor 
in  all  cases  is  a  fictionist.  If  a  man  took  his 
notion  of  business,  or  politics,  or  art,  out  of 
six-shilling  novels,  he  would  be  set  down  for 
a  fool.  Yet  most  Englishwomen  get  their 
view  of  love  and  the  married  relation  from 
these  extraordinary  works,  and  it  is  taken 
for  granted  that  nobody  is  a  penny  the  worse. 
For  my  own  part,  I  should  incline  to  the 
opinion  that  the  only  persons  who  are  a 
penny,  not  to  say  six  shillings,  the  worse,  are 
the  English  middle  and  upper  classes  as  a 
body. 

Much  has  been  said  in  derision  of  what  the 
English  call  the  Kailyard  school  of  fiction — 


I20       The  Egregious  English 

Kailyard  fiction  being,  I  need  scarcely  say, 
a  brand  of  fiction  written  by  Scotsmen  usu- 
ally in  Scotland,  and  sold  in  the  English  and 
the  American  markets.  Everybody  of  taste 
and  judgment  cheerfully  admits  that  Kail- 
yarders  are  not  persons  of  genius.  For  the 
delectation  of  the  Southerner  they  have 
made  a  Scotland  of  their  own,  the  which, 
however,  is  not  Scotland.  They  have  made 
a  Scottish  sentiment,  a  Scottish  point  of 
view,  a  Scottish  humour,  a  Scottish  pathos, 
and  even  a  Scottish  dialect,  which  may  be 
reckoned  quite  doubtful.  At  the  same  time, 
one  looks  in  vain  to  the  Kailyarders  for  any- 
thing that  is  worse  than  slobber — anything 
really  noxious  and  dreadful,  that  is  to  say. 
One  might  read  Kailyard  for  ever  and  a  day 
without  coming  to  great  moral  grief.  In- 
deed, I  would  point  out  that,  on  the  whole, 
the  Kailyard  system  of  ethics  partakes  some- 
what of  the  character  of  the  system  of  ethics 
which  used  to  be  unfolded  in  the  melodrama 
of  our  grandfathers'  days.  Virtue  rewarded, 
vice  punished,   is  the  moral  upshot  of  it. 


Fiction  121 

And  in  any  case,  and  let  it  be  as  bad  and  as 
meretricious  and  as  greatly  to  be  deprecated 
as  one  will,  we  must  always  remember  that 
the  Kailyard  book  is  a  work  invented  and 
manufactured,  not  for  Scotsmen,  but  for  the 
Anglo-Saxon — ^the  Englishman  and  his  off- 
shoots. 

Some  months  back  a  considerable  hubbub 
arose  in  English  literary  circles  because  M. 
Jules  Verne  had  been  saying  to  an  inter- 
viewer, at  Amiens  of  all  places  in  the  world! 
that  the  novel  as  a  form  of  literary  expres- 
sion was  doomed,  and  would  gradually  die 
out  of  popular  favour.  It  is  safe  to  say  that, 
in  the  eyes  of  sundry  critics  of  pretty  well 
every  nationality,  the  novel  has  been  doomed 
any  time  this  last  fifty  years.  Yet  the  novel 
comes  up  smiling  every  time.  Since  it  was 
reduced  in  price  to  six  shillings  in  England 
it  has  undoubtedly  deteriorated,  not  only  as 
a  piece  of  writing,  but  also  in  the  matter  of 
ethical  intention.  So  long  as  it  remains  the 
prey  of  some  of  its  latter-day  exploiters,  so 
long  will  it  continue  to  deteriorate.     So  long 


122       The  Egregious  English 

as  the  English  mind  continues  to  be  feeble 
and  unwholesome,  and  to  yearn  for  artificial 
thrills  and  undesirable  emotions,  so  long  will 
English  fiction  continue  to  be  of  its  present 
decadent  quality.  As  the  capitalist  says,  it 
is  all  a  question  of  supply  and  demand.  The 
great  aim  of  writers  of  fiction,  or  at  any  rate 
of  ninety-nine  per  cent,  of  them,  is  to  pro- 
duce an  article  that  will  sell.  You  must  turn 
out  what  the  public  want,  and  they  will 
assuredly  buy  it.  The  knack  of  hitting  the 
public  taste  looks  easy  to  acquire,  and  the 
fictionist  strives  after  it  with  all  his  might. 
Many  are  called  to  make  fortunes  out  of 
novel-writing :  few  are  chosen.  But  nobody 
can  examine  the  work  of  those  few  without 
perceiving  that  for  weal  or  woe — principally 
for  woe — they  know  their  business. 

Of  course,  it  goes  without  saying  that  a 
very  considerable  amount  of  fiction  is  pub- 
lished in  England  which  is  just  as  mild  and 
just  as  innocuous  as  tinned  milk.  To  this 
puling  variety  of  fiction,  however,  the  Eng- 
lish do  not  appear  to  be  very  greatly  drawn. 


Fiction  123 

It  crops  up  with  great  regularity  every  pub- 
lishing season,  it  is  solemnly  reviewed  in  the 
critical  journals,  and  it  even  stands  shoulder 
by  shoulder  with  stronger  meat  in  the  book- 
shops. But  the  fact  remains  that  it  does  not 
sell;  to  see  ** Second  Edition"  on  it  is  the 
rarest  occurrence.  In  fine,  the  English  will 
have  their  fiction  spiced,  and  highly  spiced, 
or  not  at  all.  Mealy  mouthed  writers,  over- 
reticent,  over-blushful,  over-austere  writers, 
they  do  not  want;  neither  have  they  any 
admiration  for  a  writer  who  is  plagued  with 
a  feeling  for  style,  and  who  may  be  reckoned 
an  artist  in  the  collocation  of  words.  Their 
much-vaunted  Meredith  has  never  had  the 
sale  of  a  Crockett  or  a  Barrie  or  a  Hocking, 
or,  for  that  matter,  of  a  J.  K.  Jerome.  The 
English  have  little  or  no  literary  taste,  little 
or  no  literary  acumen,  and  they  expect  their 
fictionists  to  give  them  anything  and  every- 
thing save  what  is  edifying. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

SUBURBANISM 

Of  old — that  is  to  say,  twenty  years  ago — 
the  great  majority  of  the  English  people  suf- 
fered from  a  mental  and  general  disability 
which  was  termed  "provincialism."  If  you 
hailed  from  Manchester,  or  Liverpool,  or 
Birmingham,  or  Edinburgh,  or  Glasgow,  the 
kind  gentlemen  in  London  who  size  people 
up  and  put  them  in  their  places  assured  you 
that  you  were  a  provincial,  and  that  you 
would  have  to  rub  shoulders  a  great  deal  with 
the  world — ^by  which  they  meant  London — 
before  you  could  rightly  consider  yourself 
qualified  to  exist.  Against  the  epithet  **  pro- 
vincial," however,  not  a  few  persons  rebelled, 
when  it  was  applied  flatly  to  themselves. 
Most  men  of  feeling  felt  hurt  when  you  called 
124 


Suburbanism  125 

them  provincial.  In  the  world  of  letters  and 
journalism  to  call  a  man  provincial  was  the 
last  and  unkindest  cut  of  all,  and  it  usually- 
settled  him,  just  as  to  say  that  he  has  no 
sense  of  humour  settles  him  to-day.  Then 
up  rose  Thomas  Carlyle  and  Robert  Buchan- 
an and  a  few  lesser  lights,  who  said,  ''You 
call  us  provincials:  provincials  we  undoubt- 
edly are,  and  we  glory  in  the  character." 
This  rather  baffled,  not  to  say  amazed,  the 
lily-fingered  London  assessors,  and  gradually 
the  term  **  provincial,"  as  a  term  of  oppro- 
brium, passed  out  of  use. 

It  is  admitted  now  on  all  hands  that  the 
provincial  is  a  very  useful  kind  of  fellow ;  and 
when  the  metropolis  feels  itself  running 
short  of  talent  and  energy,  the  provincial  is 
invariably  invited  to  look  in.  Latterly,  how- 
ever, the  Londoner  and  the  dweller  in  Eng- 
lish provincial  cities  have  begun  to  exhibit  a 
distinctly  modern  disorder,  which  may  be 
called,  for  want  of  a  better  term,  *'  suburban- 
ism." In  London,  which  may  be  taken  as 
the  type  of  all  English  cities,  suburbanism  is 


126       The  Egregious  English 

pretty  well  rampant.  It  has  its  origin  in 
what  the  Americans  would  call  ''location." 
A  man's  daily  work  lies,  say,  in  the  City  or 
in  the  central  quarters  of  London.  For  vari- 
ous reasons — such,  for  example,  as  consid- 
erations of  health,  expenditure,  and  custom 
—  it  is  practically  impossible  for  him  to 
live  near  his  work.  He  must  live  some- 
where; so  he  goes  to  Balham,  or  Tooting, 
or  Clapham,  or  Brondesbury,  or  Highgate,  or 
Willesden,  or  Finchley,  or  Crouch  End,  or 
Hampstead,  or  some  other  suburban  retreat. 
London  is  ringed  round  with  these  residential 
quarters,  these  little  towns  outside  the  walls. 
A  visitor  to  any  one  of  them  is  at  once 
struck  with  its  striking  and  painful  similar- 
ity to  all  the  others.  There  is  a  railway  sta- 
tion belonging  to  one  of  the  metropolitan 
lines;  there  is  a  High  Street,  fronted  with 
lofty  and  rather  gaudy  shops;  there  is  a 
reasonable  sprinkling  of  churches  and  chap- 
els; there  is  a  brand-new  red-brick  theatre; 
and  the  rest  is  row  on  row  and  row  on  row 
of  villa  residences,  each  with  its  dreary  pali- 


Suburbanism  127 

sading  and  attenuated  grass-plot  in  front, 
and  its  curious  annex  of  kitchen,  or  scullery, 
behind.  Miles  and  miles  of  these  villas  exist 
in  every  metropolitan  suburb  worth  the 
name;  and  though  the  rents  and  sizes  of 
them  may  vary,  they  are  all  built  to  one 
architectural  formula,  and  all  pinchbeck, 
ostentatious,  and  imlovely.  No  person  of 
judgment,  nobody  possessed  of  a  ray  of  the 
philosophic  spirit,  can  gaze  upon  them  with- 
out concluding  at  once  that  the  English  do 
not  know  how  to  live.  Take  a  street  of  these 
villas,  big  or  little,  and  what  do  you  find? 
You  note,  first,  that  nearly  every  house,  be 
it  occupied  by  clerk,  Jew  financier,  or  pro- 
fessional man,  has  got  a  highfalutin  name 
of  its  own.  The  County  Council  or  local 
authority  has  already  bestowed  upon  it  a 
number.  But  this  is  not  enough  for  your 
suburbanist,  who  must  needs  appropriate  for 
his  house  a  name  which  will  look  swagger  on 
his  letter-paper.  Hence  No.  2,  Sandringham 
Road,  Tooting,  is  not  No.  2,  Sandringham 
Road,  Tooting,  at  all;   but  The  Laurels,  if 


128       The  Egregious  English 

you  please.  No.  4 — not  to  be  outdone — is 
Holmwood;  No.  6  is  Hazledene;  No.  8,  The 
Pines;  No.  10,  Sutherland  House;  and  so 
forth.  Then,  again,  if  you  walk  down  a 
street  and  keep  your  eye  on  the  front  win- 
dows of  this  thoroughfare  of  mansions,  you 
will  note  that  every  one  of  those  windows 
has  cheap  lace  curtains  to  it,  and  that  im- 
mediately behind  the  centre  of  the  window 
there  is  a  little  table,  upon  which  loving 
hands  have  placed  a  green  high-art  vase, 
containing  a  plant  of  sorts.  And  right  back 
in  the  dimness  of  the  parlour  there  is  a  side- 
board with  a  high  mirrored  back. 

If  you  made  acquaintance  with  half  a 
dozen  of  the  occupiers  of  these  houses, 
and  were  invited  into  the  half  dozen  front 
rooms,  you  would  find  in  each,  in  addition 
to  the  sideboard  before  mentioned,  a  piano 
of  questionable  manufacture,  a  brass  music- 
stool  with  a  red  velvet  cushion,  an  over- 
mantel with  mirrored  panels,  a  "saddle-bag 
suite,"  consisting  of  lady's  and  gent's  and 
six  ordinary  chairs  and  a  couch;  a  centre- 


Suburbanism  1^9 

table  with  a  velvet-pile  cloth  upon  it,  a  bam- 
boo bookcase  containing  a  Corelli  and  a  Hall 
Caine  or  so,  together  with  some  sixpenny 
Dickenses  picked  up  at  drapers'  bargain- 
sales,  Nuttall's  Dictionary^  Mrs.  Beeton's 
House  Book,  a  Bible,  a  Prayer  Book,  some 
hymn-books,  a  work-basketful  of  socks  wait- 
ing to  be  darned,  and  a  little  pile  of  music, 
chiefly  pirated.  At  night,  when  Spriggs 
comes  home  to  The  Laurels,  he  has  an  apo- 
logy for  late  dinner,  gets  into  his  slippers, 
and  retires  with  Mrs.  Spriggs,  and  perhaps  his 
elder  daughter,  into  that  parlour.  There  he 
reads  a  halfpenny  newspaper  till  there  is 
nothing  left  in  it  to  read;  then  he  talks  to 
Mrs.  Spriggs  about  that  beast  So-and-so,  his 
employer ;  and  Mrs.  Spriggs  tells  him  not  to 
grumble  so  much,  and  asks  the  elder  daugh- 
ter why  she  does  n't  play  a  chune  to  'liven  us 
up  a  bit.  ''  Yes,"  says  Spriggs,  "  what  is  the 
good  of  having  a  piano,  and  me  buying  you 
music  every  Saturday,  if  you  never  play?" 
Whereupon  the  elder  daughter  rattles  through 
Dolly  Gray,  The  Honeysuckle  and  the  Bee,  and 


130       The  Egregious  English 

Everybody  's  Loved  by  Some  One;  and  Spriggs 
beats  time  with  his  foot  till  he  grows  weary, 
and  thinks  we  had  better  have  supper  and 
get  off  to  bed. 

This  kind  of  thing  is  going  on  right  down 
both  sides  of  Sandringham  Road — at  Holm- 
wood,  at  Hazledene,  at  The  Pines,  and  at 
Sutherland  House,  as  well  as  at  The  Laurels 
— every  week-day  evening  between  the  hours 
of  eight  and  midnight.  In  point  of  fact,  it 
is  going  on  all  over  Tooting.  It  is  the  sub- 
urban notion  of  an  'appy  evening  at  home; 
and,  hallowed  as  it  is  by  wont  and  custom, 
everybody  in  Tooting  takes  it  to  be  the  best 
that  life  can  offer  after  business  hours.  Per- 
haps it  is.  Just  before  supper,  or  haply  a 
little  afterwards,  however,  Spriggs  says  that 
he  believes  he  will  take  a  little  stroll  "round 
the  houses."  He  puts  on  a  straw  hat  in 
summer  and  a  tweed  cap  in  winter,  and  pro- 
ceeds gravely  down  the  Sandringham  Road 
until  he  reaches  a  break  in  the  long  array  of 
villas,  and  is  aware  of  a  rather  flaring  public- 
house.     Into  the  saloon  bar  of  this  hostelry 


Suburbanism  13^ 

he  walks  staidly,  nods  to  the  company,  and 
asks  the  barmaid  for  a  drop  of  the  usual. 
"  Let  me  see,"  says  that  sweet  lady ; ''  Johnny 
Walker,  is  n't  it?"  ''Well,  you  know  it  is," 
says  Spriggs,  as  he  hands  over  threepence. 
With  the  glass  of  whisky  in  his  hand  he  re- 
tires to  the  nearest  red  plush  settee,  and 
looks  listlessly  at  the  illustrated  papers  on 
the  little  table  in  front  of  him,  drinks  some- 
what slowly,  smokes  a  pipe,  exchanges  a 
word  about  the  weather  with  the  landlord  of 
the  establishment,  says  there's  time  for  an- 
other before  closing  time,  has  another,  and 
at  twelve-thirty  trots  off  home. 

The  seven  or  eight  other  men  in  the  saloon 
bar  being  respectively  the  occupiers  of  Holm- 
wood,  Hazledene,  The  Pines,  Sutherland 
House,  etc.,  have  done  almost  exactly  as 
Spriggs  has  done  in  the  way  of  drinks  and 
nods  and  illustrated  papers  and  having  a 
final  at  twenty  minutes  past  twelve.  But 
during  the  whole  evening  they  have  not  ex- 
changed a  rational  word  with  one  another. 
They  have  nothing  to  talk  about;  therefore 


132       The  Egregious  English 

they  have  not  talked.  They  are  neighbours, 
and  they  know  it;  but  they  all  hold  them- 
selves to  be  so  much  superior  to  one  another 
that  they  have  scorned  to  speak  to  each 
other,  except  in  the  most  cursory  and  casual 
way.  Next  morning,  at  a  few  minutes  to 
nine  o'clock,  they  will  all  be  scooting  anx- 
iously along  the  Sandringham  Road  with 
set  faces,  damp  brows,  and  a  fear  at  their 
hearts  that  they  are  going  to  miss  their 
train.  They  will  travel  in  packed  carriages, 
half  of  them  standing  up,  while  the  other 
half  growls,  to  Ludgate  Hill  or  Moorgate 
Street,  as  the  case  may  be,  and  then  rush  off 
again  to  their  respective  offices,  in  fear  and 
trembling  this  time  lest  they  should  be  three 
minutes  late  and  the  ''governor"  might 
notice  it. 

This  is  the  life  of  the  males  in  the  Sand- 
ringham Road  year  in  and  year  out.  Through 
living  in  the  same  houses,  in  the  midst  of  the 
same  furniture,  listening  to  the  same  pianos, 
drinking  at  the  same  public-houses,  going  to 
business  in  the  same  trains,  they  become  as 


Suburbanism  133 

like  one  another  as  peas.  They  are  all  anx- 
ious, all  dull,  all  short  of  sleep,  all  short  of 
money.  In  brief,  they  have  become  suburb- 
anized.  The  monotony  and  snobbery  and 
listlessness  of  their  home  life  are  reflected  in 
their  conduct  of  the  working-day's  affairs. 
There  is  not  a  man  amongst  them  who  has  a 
soul  above  his  job.  Each  of  them  sticks  at 
business,  not  because  he  loves  it  or  likes  it, 
but  simply  because  he  knows  that,  if  he  were 
discovered  in  a  remissness,  he  would  get 
what  he  calls  "the  sack."  Each  of  them 
"lunches" — oh,  this  English  limch! — at  the 
bar  of  a  public-house  on  a  glass  of  bitter  beer 
and  a  penny  Welsh  rare-bit.  Each  of  them 
feels  a  bit  chippy  and  not  a  little  sleepy  of 
an  afternoon,  and  each  of  them  races  for  his 
train  in  the  evening,  chock-full  of  worry  and 
bad-temper.  You  must  live  in  the  suburbs 
if  you  are  to  live  in  London  at  all,  and  there 
is  no  escape  from  it. 

The  lines  of  the  female  suburbians  are  cast 
in  more  or  less  pleasant  places.  They  do 
not  need  to  go  to  town  every  day.     There 


134       The  Egregious  English 

are  shops  galore,  filled  with  just  the  goods 
they  want,  round  the  corner;  and  there  is 
always  the  next  female  on  both  sides  to  gos- 
sip with.  For,  unlike  the  male  suburbian, 
the  female  suburbian  will  talk  to  her  neigh- 
bours. Her  conversation  is  of  babes,  and 
butchers'  meat,  and  the  piece  at  the  theatre, 
and  the  bargains  at  the  stores  in  the  High 
Road,  and  *'him."  He,  or  "him,"  means 
the  good  lady's  husband.  She  never  by  any 
chance  refers  to  him  either  by  his  Christian 
name,  or  his  surname,  or  as  "my  husband." 
It  is  always,  "He  said  to  me  this  morning," 
or,  "  As  I  was  saying  to  him  before  he  went 
to  business," — which,  I  take  it,  is  a  peculiarly 
English  habit.  The  female  suburbian  goes 
out  to  tea  sometimes,  usually  at  the  house 
of  some  suburban  relative.  Her  dress  is  a 
curious  blend  of  ostentation  and  economy. 
She  will  be  in  the  fashion;  and,  being  an 
Englishwoman,  "expense  is  no  object,"  pro- 
viding she  can  get  the  money.  She  has  no 
notion  of  thrift ;  she  is  perennially  in  arrears 
with  the  milk  and  the  insurance  man :   and 


Suburbanism  135 

when  money  gets  very  tight  indeed,  she  lec- 
tures her  husband  on  his  wicked  inability  to 
make  more  than  he  is  getting.  The  whole 
life,  whether  for  male  or  female,  is  dreary, 
harried,  unrelieved,  and  destructive  of  every- 
thing that  tends  to  make  life  affable  and 
tolerable. 

In  view  of  the  obvious  evils  suburbanism 
has  brought  about  in  the  English  metropolis, 
it  might  have  been  expected  that  the  Eng- 
lish provincial  cities  would  have  done  their 
best  to  avoid  similar  troubles  in  their  own 
areas.  So  far  from  this  being  the  case,  how- 
ever, the  craze  for  suburbanism  is  making 
itself  apparent  wherever  one  turns.  City 
and  borough  councils  lead  the  way  by  erect- 
ing, at  the  public  expense,  artisans'  and 
clerks'  dwellings  well  out  of  the  town.  They 
hold  that  fresh  air,  the  open  country,  and 
cheap  railway  fares  are  all  that  is  wanted  to 
make  the  English  citizen's  life  a  perennial 
joy  to  him.  Yet  the  dwellings  they  erect 
are  of  the  shoddiest  and  least  homelike  kind, 
the  fresh-air  which  is  to  do  the  worker  and 


13^       The  Egregious  English 

the  children  so  much  good  is  a  doubtful 
quantity,  and  the  cheap  railway  fares  are 
bragged  about  without  regard  to  the  time 
taken  up  in  travelling  and  the  hurry  and 
anxiety  to  catch  trains.  Suburbanism  as  a 
stereot3rped  and  soul-deadening  institution  is 
of  purely  English  origin.  In  no  other  coun- 
try in  the  world  do  convention  and  what 
other  people  will  say  so  rule  the  lives  of  men 
as  they  do  in  England.  Suburbanism  is  in 
many  ways  the  most  obvious  of  the  many 
products  of  English  convention.  It  is  at 
once  an  indication  of  brainlessness,  want  of 
intelligence,  and  incipient  decay.  Appar- 
ently there  is  to  be  no  limit  to  it.  Outside 
London  new  suburbs  spring  up  almost  weekly. 
But  their  newness  brings  no  changes  in  its 
train.  Each  new  suburb  is  mapped  out  and 
built  exactly  on  the  lines  of  the  old  ones; 
each  is  destined  for  the  reception  of  exactly 
the  same  kind  of  stupid  people ;  each  will  be 
the  living-grotind  of  generations  of  people 
still  more  stupid. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE   MAN-ABOUT-TOWN 

The  English  man-about-town — and  I  am 
not  acquainted  with  any  other  sort — is,  to 
put  it  mildly,  a  devil  of  a  fellow.  Who  he 
may  be,  how  he  gets  a  living,  whether  he  gets  a 
living,  how  and  why  he  became  a  man-about- 
town,  and  whether,  after  all,  he  is  really  a 
man-about-town,  are  matters  which  are  wrapt 
in  mystery.  Everybody  knows  him,  yet  no- 
body knows  much  about  him.  You  meet 
him  everywhere,  yet  nobody  can  tell  you 
how  he  gets  there.  His  acquaintance  is  as- 
tonishing, ranging  from  dustmen  to  dukes,  as 
it  were;  he  cuts  nobody,  though  he  is  inti- 
mate with  nobody;  he  is  familiar  with  his 
world  and  all  that  it  expects  of  him ;  and  he 
plays  the  game  skilfully,  correctly,  and  as  a 
137 


138       The  Egregious  English 

gentleman  should.  There  are  droves  of  him 
in  London;  probably  no  other  city  in  the 
world  could,  with  comfort,  accommodate  so 
many  of  him.  He  lives  in  the  sun ;  he  is  the 
joy  and  pride  of  the  restaurateurs'  and  the 
cafe-keepers'  hearts ;  no  billiard-room  is  com- 
plete without  him;  he  shines  at  bars  of 
onyx;  music-halls  and  theatres  could  not 
get  on  without  him ;  and,  on  the  whole,  it  is 
his  useful  and  pleasing  function  to  keep  the 
West  End  of  London  and  its  offshoots  going. 
What  the  West  End  of  London  means  to  the 
man  about -town  is  a  large  question.  It 
means  clubs  in  the  morning,  with  a  tailor,  a 
hatter,  a  bookmaker  or  two,  thrown  in;  it 
means  expensive  lunches,  lazy,  somnolent 
afternoons,  big  dinners,  hard  drinking,  cards, 
night  clubs,  and  a  day  that  ends  at  three 
o'clock  in  the  morning.  Nobody  but  an 
Englishman  could  stand  the  racket ;  nobody 
but  an  Englishman  could  find  satisfaction  in 
so  doing. 

The  man-about-town  is  the  last  expression 
of  an  unhealthy  plutocracy;  he  is  the  child 


The  Man-About-Town        139 

of  means,  the  son  of  his  father,  the  pam- 
pered darling  of  his  mother;  and  he  has 
never  understood  that  life  was  anything 
more  than  a  frivolous  holiday.  Whether  he 
has  money  or  happens  to  have  spent  it  all, 
he  sets  the  standard  of  expenditure  for 
everybody  who  would  be  considered  in  the 
movement.  He  also  sets  the  fashion  in  hats, 
coats,  trousers,  fancy  waistcoats,  shoes,  walk- 
ing-sticks, and  scarf-pins  for  Englishmen  at 
large.  It  never  occurs  to  him  that  he  does 
this,  but  he  does  it.  He  it  is,  too,  who  is 
the  prime  supporter  and  patron  of  the  manly 
English  sports,  horse-racing,  glove-fighting, 
coaching,  moting,  polo,  shooting,  fishing, 
yachting,  and  so  forth.  In  these  exercises 
he  finds  great  delight.  When  he  is  not  busy 
dining  and  wining  and  painting  the  town 
red,  sport  is  the  mainstay  of  his  existence. 

He  is  usually  young  till  he  reaches  the 
age  of  thirty,  when  he  begins  to  decline  rap- 
idly. But  the  older  he  gets  the  younger  he 
gets.  Although  he  may  lose  his  hair,  and  be 
compelled  to  have  resort  to  false  teeth  and 


I40      The  Egregious  English 

elastic  stockings,  his  spirits  are  invariably  of 
the  cheerfullest,  his  laugh  is  boisterous,  his 
interest  in  life  acute,  and  he  continues  to  be 
passionately  fond  of  food  and  drink.  It  is 
not  till  his  locks  become  hoar,  his  purse  well- 
nigh  empty,  and  the  number  of  his  years 
well  over  threescore-and-ten  that  he  begins 
to  droop.  Englishmen  will  point  him  out 
to  you  in  cafes,  and  say  with  hushed  voices, 
"You  see  that  man,  —  the  one  with  the 
frowsy  beard  and  his  hat  atilt — ^well,  he 
spent  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  twice! 
A  hundred  and  fifty  thousand,  my  boy! 
What  did  he  do  with  it?  Oh,  well,  what  do 
people  do  with  money?  There's  a  man,  sir, 
that's  seen  life:  used  to  have  a  house  in 
Berkeley  Square;  has  owned  three  Derby 
winners ;  built  the  Thingamybob  Theatre  for 
Miss  Jumpabouty;  knows  everybody;  has 
hobnobbed  with  the  King  when  he  was 
Prince  of  Wales;   used  to  be  hand-in-glove 

with  the  Duke  of and  that  crowd ;  and 

now,  damme!  he  has  n't  a  pennypiece." 
All  this  with  the  air  of  a  person  who  is 


The  Man-About-Town        141 

showing  you  something  worth  seeing.  It  is 
the  EngHsh  fatuity,  first  of  all,  to  admire  the 
man  who  is  possessed  of  wealth;  secondly, 
to  admire  a  man  who  is  throwing  his  money 
away;  and,  thirdly,  to  look  with  respectful 
awe  upon  the  man  who  has  thrown  it  away. 
It  warms  the  English  heart  and  fires  the 
English  imagination  to  see  the  son  of  a  re- 
cently deceased  provision-dealer  playing  the 
prince  at  the  best  hotels,  plunging  at  Ascot 
and  Monte  Carlo,  buying  up  the  stalls  at  the 
Frivolity  at  the  behest  of  Lottie  Flutterfast, 
and  generally  flinging  to  the  winds  the  hard- 
earned  and,  to  a  great  extent,  ill-gotten 
estate  of  his  late  lamented  parent.  By  all 
the  best  people — ^by  all  the  best  English 
people,  that  is  to  say — such  a  youth  is  re- 
ceived and  made  welcome,  if  not  exactly 
taken  to  the  bosom.  Englishmen  ask  him  to 
dinner  simply  because  he  has  money.  They 
are  aware  that  his  courses  will  not  bear  ex- 
amination, that  his  tastes  are  gross,  that  his 
intellect  is  none  of  the  brightest.  He  has 
nothing  to  say  for  himself;  he  is  neither 


142       The  Egregious  English 

entertaining,  nor  amusing,  nor  instructive. 
The  Englishman  has  no  ulterior  designs  upon 
him ;  he  does  not  hope  to  get  him  into  this 
or  that  financial  swim,  neither  does  he  desire 
to  marry  his  daughter  to  him ;  he  simply  feels 
that  it  is  well  to  be  friendly  with  money  and 
the  man-about-town. 

Even  a  bankrupt  or  ** broke"  man-about- 
town  is  better  to  the  Englishman  than  none 
at  all.  With  such  a  person  he  will  foregather 
and  be  pleasant  in  the  sight  of  all  men. 
"Old  So-and-so,"  he  says,  "is  a  dear  old 
sort.  He  is  broke,  of  course,  and  sometimes 
he  rather  worries  one  for  sovereigns.  But  I 
have  never  deserted  a  pal  in  adversity  in  my 
life,  and  I  am  not  going  to  begin  with  Old 
So-and-so."  Thus  your  good  snob  English- 
man would  lead  you  to  believe  that  he  was 
on  terms  of  intimacy  and  affection  with  Old 
So-and-so  in  Old  So-and-so's  palmy  money- 
squandering  days.  Whereas,  in  point  of  fact, 
he  never  clapped  eyes  on  the  man  till  he  had 
spent  his  last  farthing. 

It  is  all  very  English,  and  to  a  mere  Scot 


The  Man-About-Town        143 

a  trifle  astonishing.  The  Scot,  if  I  know 
him  at  all,  takes  no  joys  of  spendthrifts,  how- 
ever prettily  dressed,  and,  least  of  all,  can 
he  be  brought  to  court  the  society  of  a  man 
who  has  reduced  himself  to  beggary  by  ex- 
travagance and  riot.  The  bare  gift  of  pro- 
digality and  the  bare  reputation  of  having 
been  wealthy  are  nothing  to  the  Scot.  If  he 
wants  men  to  admire,  he  can  find  men  of  sol- 
ider  quality.  The  Englishman,  on  the  other 
hand,  has  no  great  love  for  either  solidity  or 
worth;  the  first  makes  him  envious;  the 
second  bores  him.  Though  he  may  himself 
be  a  person  of  judgment  and  sober  life,  he 
likes  to  have  about  him  men  who  are  going 
or  who  have  gone  the  whole  hog,  and  who 
pursue  their  pleasures  without  restraint,  re- 
morse, or  fear.  Hence  the  man-about-town 
will  always  figure  interCvStingly  in  English 
society.  There  is  romance  about  him.  He 
has  been  foolish,  and  perhaps  even  wicked; 
but  he  belongs  to  the  select  coterie  of  people 
who,  when  all  is  said,  make  the  gay  world 
go  round. 


CHAPTER  XV 

DRINK 

Mr.  Crosland  has  very  kindly  suggested 
that  ''under  the  inspiring  tutelage  of  the  na- 
tional bard  Scotland  has  become  one  of  the 
drunkenest  nations  in  the  world."  I  shall 
not  retaliate  as  one  might  do,  but  shall  con- 
tent myself  by  referring  the  reader  to  the 
easily  accessible  tables  of  statistics,  which 
render  it  quite  plain  that  Scotland's  dnmken- 
ness  is  very  considerably  exceeded  by  the 
drunkenness  of  England. 

In  London,  at  any  rate,  strong  drink  flows 
like  a  river.  There  are  5300  licensed  houses 
in  the  metropolitan  area  alone.  In  Kilbum, 
a  suburb  of  more  or  less  irreproachable  re- 
spectability, there  are  twenty-five  churches 
and  chapels  and  thirty-five  public-houses. 
144 


Drink  145 

During  late  years  public-house  property  has 
begun  to  be  looked  upon  in  the  light  of  a 
gilt-edged  investment.  Turn  where  one  will, 
one  finds  the  older  inns  are  being  swept 
away,  while  on  their  sites  are  erected  flaring 
gin-palaces,  with  plate-glass  fronts,  elab- 
orate mahogany  fitments,  gorgeous  saloon 
and  private  bars,  painted  ceilings,  inlaid 
floors,  and  electric  light  throughout.  Be- 
hind the  bar,  instead  of  mine  host  of  a 
former  day  and  his  wife  and  daughter,  there 
are  half  a  dozen  perked-up  barmaids  with 
rouged  cheeks  and  Rossetti  hair,  and  a  per- 
son called  the  manager,  who  for  £2  a  week 
runs  the  place  for  its  proprietors — a  Limited 
Company,  which  owns,  perhaps,  twenty  or 
thirty  other  houses.  In  the  conduct  of  these 
mammoth  drinking-places  three  great  points 
are  kept  in  view:  namely,  that  a  quick- 
drinking,  stand-up  trade  pays  better  than 
any  amount  of  slow  regular  custom ;  that  the 
English  drinker  of  the  lower  class  cannot  tell 
the  difference  between  good  drink  and  bad, 
often  preferring,  indeed,  the  bad  to  the  good ; 


146       The  Egregious  English 

and  that,  as  bad  liquor  is  cheaper  than  good, 
the  sound  commercial  thing  to  do  is  to  sup- 
ply bad  liquor. 

With  these  admirable  axioms  continually 
before  it,  the  English  trade  has  prospered 
amazingly.  More  drink  and  worse  drink  is 
sold  in  England  to-day  than  has  ever  been 
sold  in  England  before.  Through  legislation 
intended  to  ensure  sound  liquor  and  the 
proper  conduct  of  licensed  houses  the  pro- 
prietors have  consistently  made  a  point  of 
driving  the  usual  brewer's  dray.  ''  In  order 
to  meet  the  Food  and  Drugs  Adulteration 
Act,  all  spirits  sold  at  this  establishment, 
while  of  the  same  excellent  quality  as  hereto- 
fore, are  diluted  according  to  strength.'' 
"The  same  excellent  quality  as  heretofore" 
is  choice,  and  so  is  "diluted  according  to 
strength."  As  for  the  beer,  we  dilute  also 
the  beer  according  to  strength.  When  we 
are  caught  at  it,  it  is  a  mistake  on  the  part  of 
the  cellarman,  who  has  been  discharged ;  and 
the  fine  is  so  small  in  proportion  to  the  profit 
on  selling  water,  that  we  smile  at  the  back  of 


Drink  147 

our  necks  and  keep  on  diluting  according  to 
strength.  Our  whole  system,  in  fact,  is  de- 
signed to  make  people  drink,  and  to  make 
them  drink  the  worst  that  we  dare  put  be- 
fore them. 

Now,  the  Scot,  drunkard  or  no  drunkard, 
does  have  something  of  a  taste  in  liquor. 
The  best  clarets  have  gone  to  Scotland  (in 
spite  of  Mr.  Crosland)  since  claret  became  a 
dinner  wine.  You  cannot  put  off  a  Scot  with 
either  bad  whisky  or  bad  beer.  He  knows 
what  whisky  should  be  and  what  beer  should 
be,  and  in  Scotland,  at  any  rate,  he  never 
has  any  difficulty  in  getting  them.  But  the 
English,  taking  them  in  the  mass,  are  quite 
the  other  way.  Any  sort  of  wine,  provided 
it  be  properly  fortified  and  sophisticated, 
passes  with  them  for  the  real  thing.  Their 
Scotch  whisky  is  about  the  most  wholesome 
thing  they  drink;  but  large  quantities  of 
this  are  bought  by  English  merchants  in  a 
crude  state,  and  rammed  down  the  public 
throat  without  a  thought  to  maturing, 
blending,  and  otherwise  rendering  the  spirit 


14^       The  Egregious  English 

potable.  English  beer,  we  have  been  told  in 
song  and  story,  is  the  finest  beer  in  the 
world.  Yet  nobody  can  visit  an  English 
brewery  without  discovering  that  English 
beer  is  not  English  beer  at  all.  Glucose  in 
the  place  of  malt,  quassia  and  gentian  in  the 
place  of  hops,  finings  in  the  place  of  storage, 
are  the  universal  order;  and  so  depraved 
and  perverted  has  the  fine  old  English  taste 
in  beer  become  that  brewers  who  have  set  up 
to  provide  an  honest  article  and  sent  it  out 
to  their  customers  have  had  it  returned  with 
the  curt  comment  that  *'  nobody  would  drink 
such  hog-wash,  and  what  the  customers 
wanted  was  beer,  and  not  brewer's  apron." 
Every  now  and  again  scares  crop  up  in  con- 
sequence of  the  use  of  improper  ingredients ; 
there  is  an  inquiry,  a  Royal  Commission,  and 
the  Englishman  still  goes  on  stolidly  drink- 
ing. Arsenic  will  not  drive  him  away  from 
his  favourite  tipple,  neither  will  cocculus  in- 
dicus  or  any  of  the  round  dozen  abomina- 
tions upon  which  the  brewer's  chemist  takes 
his  stand. 


Drink  149 

If  there  is  one  thing  more  than  another 
that  is  considered  the  chief  necessity  of  life 
in  the  English  household  of  the  poorer  class, 
it  is  beer,  and  its  sister  beverage,  porter. 
From  morning  till  night  the  can  is  continu- 
ally going  between  the  house  of  the  artisan 
and  the  neighbouring  "public."  The  first 
thing  in  the  morning  the  artisan  himself 
must  have  a  couple  of  goes  of  rum  and  milk; 
by  eleven  o'clock  he  is  ready  for  a  pint  of 
four-half;  at  noon,  when  he  knocks  off  for 
dinner,  he  will  imbibe  a  quart  or  more  of  the 
same  beverage ;  and  at  night,  after  work,  he 
sits  in  the  taproom  till  closing-time,  and 
drinks  as  much  as  ever  he  can  pay  for  or 
chalk  up.  Meanwhile,  his  wife  must  have 
her  drop  of  porter  in  the  morning,  her 
drop  of  bitter  to  dinner,  and  her  drop  of 
something  hot  before  going  to  bed.  Also  on 
Saturday  afternoons,  when  the  twain  go  mar- 
keting together,  they  must  have  a  few  drinks, 
just  to  show  there  is  no  ill-feeling ;  while  on 
Saturday  night  the  artisan  not  infrequently 
improves   the    shining   hours    by    "getting 


I50      The  Egregious  English 

blind,"  to  use  his  own  elegant  phrase.  Thus 
it  quite  commonly  happens  that  a  third  and 
even  a  half  of  the  total  income  of  a  house- 
hold of  the  artisan  class  is  spent  in  alcohol. 
Thrift,  provision  for  a  rainy  day  and  for  old 
age,  become  an  impossibility.  Underfeed- 
ing usually  walks  hand  in  hand  with  over- 
drinking ;  the  man  loses  his  nerve,  the  woman 
her  comeliness  and  her  capacity ;  and  the  end 
is  pauperism  and  a  pauper's  grave,  if  nothing 
worse. 

Among  the  English  middle  and  upper 
classes  there  is  distinctly  a  greater  tendency 
to  moderation  than  among  the  lower  classes. 
For  all  that,  the  middle  classes  especially  can 
point  to  a  great  many  brilliant  examples  of 
the  fine  art  of  soaking.  Publicans,  betting- 
men,  commercial  travellers,  proprietors  of 
businesses,  solicitors'  clerks,  journalists,  and 
the  like  get  through  an  amount  of  drinking 
in  the  course  of  a  day  which  would  probably 
appal  even  themselves  if  they  kept  an  ac- 
coimt  of  it.  '*  Let's  'ave  a  drink,"  is  invari- 
ably one  of  the  first  phrases  dropped  when 


Drink  151 

two  Englishmen  meet.  "We'll  *ave  an- 
other" is  sure  to  follow;  and  so  is,  "'Ang 
it,  man!  we  must  have  a  final."  Among  the 
middle  classes,  too,  as  also  among  the  upper 
classes,  there  is  a  very  great  deal  of  secret 
drinking,  particularly  among  women  and 
persons  whose  professional  or  official  posi- 
tions necessitate  the  maintenance  of  an 
appearance  of  extreme  respectability.  The 
grocer's  license  and  his  fine  stock  of  carefully 
selected  wines  and  spirits  offer  a  ready  means 
of  supply  to  the  female  dipsomaniac,  who 
would  not  be  seen  in  a  public-house  for 
worlds ;  besides,  gin  can  be  charged  as  tea  in 
a  grocery  account,  and  many  a  bottle  of 
brandy  has  figured  in  such  accounts  under 
the  innocent  pseudonym  of  "rolled  ox- 
tongue." 

Though  the  English  upper  classes,  as  I 
have  said,  drink  with  a  certain  moderation, 
their  moderation  really  embraces  a  quantity 
of  liquor  which  would  send  the  artisan  quite 
off  his  head.  Whiskies-and-sodas  at  noon, 
Burgundy  at  lunch,  with  cognac  to  one's 


152       The  Egregious  English 

coffee,  three  kinds  of  wine  at  dinner,  fol- 
lowed by  liqueurs  and  whisky,  make  no 
appreciable  mark  on  a  man  who  is  living  at 
his  ease  and  can  sleep  as  long  as  he  likes; 
but  the  sum  total  of  alcohol  is  quite  consid- 
erable, and  probably  greater  than  that  con- 
sumed by  the  ''drunken  sot"  for  whom  my 
lord  has  such  contempt. 

Of  English  drinking,  generally,  one  may 
remark  that  it  is  done  in  a  very  deliberate 
and  unsociable  way.  The  English  cannot  be 
said  to  drink  for  company's  sake.  They  do 
not  foregather  and  carry  on  their  drinking 
merrily.  In  their  cups  they  are  neither 
witty  nor  happy,  but  just  dull  and  dour  and 
inclined  to  be  quarrelsome.  They  drink  for 
drinking'ssake, — for  the  sake  of  intoxication, 
and  to  drown  trouble.  I  wish  them  good 
luck  and  less  of  their  vile  concoctions ! 


CHAPTER  XVI 

FOOD 

The  subject  of  diet — he  prefers  to  call  it 
diet — is  apparently  one  of  unlimited  interest 
to  the  Englishman.  Meet  him  where  you 
will,  he  is  ever  ready  to  discuss,  first,  the 
weather,  and  then  the  things — that  is  to  say, 
the  kinds  of  food — that  agree  with  him.  In- 
deed, you  could  almost  stake  your  life  on  ex- 
tracting from  any  strange  Englishman  you 
happen  to  come  across  some  such  statement 
as,  ''I  can't  abide  eggs,"  or,  ''Veal  always 
makes  me  bilious,"  within  ten  minutes  of 
opening  up  a  conversation  with  him.  The 
Englishman's  house,  we  are  told,  is  his  castle ; 
and  the  Englishman's  hobby,  surely,  is  his 
digestion.  In  point  of  fact,  ninety-nine  per 
cent,  of  adolescent  and  adult  English  people 
153 


154       The  Egregious  English 

suffer  from  chronic  indigestion  in  a  more 
or  less  severe  form.  Flatulence,  heartburn, 
t-^  colic,  and  "liver*'  are  the  Englishman's  mor- 
tal heritage.  He  is  invariably  troubled  with 
some  of  them,  and  quite  commonly  with  all. 
If  you  relieved  him  of  them  he  would  scarcely 
thank  you,  because  he  has  nursed  them  from 
his  youth  up,  and  what  he  really  wants  is 
amelioration,  and  not  cure.  Probably  this 
is  the  reason  why  in  the  midst  of  his  wails 
and  his  unholy  talk  about  diet  he  continues 
to  feed  in  precisely  the  grossest,  greasiest,  and 
least  rational  manner  that  generations  of  bad 
feeders  have  been  able  to  develop. 

Of  mornings,  if  you  sojourn  with  an  Eng- 
lish family,  you  will  be  invited  to  breakfast 
at  half-past  eight.  Promptly  at  that  hour 
they  serve  a  sort  of  sickly  oatmeal  soup,  com- 
pounded apparently  of  milk  and  sugar,  which 
they  call  porridge.  Then  follow  thick  and 
piping-hot  coffee  with  *am  and  eggs,  fish,  or 
a  chop,  and  bread  and  butter  and  marmalade 
as  a  sort  of  wind-up.  The  man  who  tackles 
this  menu  goes  to  business  belching  like  a 


Food  155 

torn  balloon.  By  eleven  o'clock,  however,  he 
is  ready  for  a  little  snack — oysters  and  cha- 
blis,  prawns  on  toast,  a  mouthful  of  bread 
and  cheese  and  a  bottle  of  Bass,  or  something 
of  that  kind.  Then  at  half -past  one  there  is 
lunch,  practically  a  dinner  of  several  courses, 
or  a  cut  from  the  joint,  accompanied  by  what 
the  English  euphoniously  term  "two  veg.*' 
At  tea-time  your  Englishman  must  needs 
lave  himself  in  a  dish  of  Orange- Pekoe  or 
Bohea,  to  the  accompaniment  of  lumps  of 
cake.  And  at  long  and  last  comes  dinner, 
the  crowning  guzzle  of  the  Englishman's  day, 
and  a  function  usually  spread  over  a  couple 
of  hours.  It  will  be  perceived  that  this  gus- 
tatory programme  or  routine  has  been  copied 
from  the  French.  The  French  put  away  two 
good  meals  per  diem,  one  at  noon  and  the 
other  in  the  evening,  and  there  is  no  reason 
why  the  English  should  not  do  the  same. 
When  you  come  to  think  of  it,  dinner  in  the 
middle  of  the  day  is  a  low,  imder-bred,  im- 
distinguished  arrangement ;  also  not  to  dine 
at  night  is  to  run  the  risk  of  not  losing  one's 


156       The  Egregious  English 

figure,  and  of  having  the  neighbours  say  that 
one  cannot  afford  it. 

The  French  programme  would  be  all  very 
well  if  it  were  carried  out  on  French  lines 
all  through.  But  it  is  not.  When  you  say 
**  soup"  in  a  French  restaurant,  it  means  that 
you  will  be  served  with  half  a  dozen  table- 
spoonfuls  of  consomme,  or  petite  marmite,  or 
bisque,  as  the  case  may  be.  When  the  Eng- 
lishman says  "  soup,"  he  means  enough  thick 
stock  to  wash  a  bus  down.  What  is  more,  he 
gets  it  and  swallows  it.  And  it  is  so  all  down 
the  menu — too  much  of  everything,  and  don't 
you  think  you  can  put  me  off  with  your 
blooming  homoeopathic  portions.  A  liberal 
table,  no  stint,  good  food,  and  plenty  of  it,  is 
one  of  the  bulwarks  of  English  respectability. 
That  bad  digestion  and  talks  about  diet  fol- 
low is  nobody's  fault. 

This  profusion — this  overfood,  as  it  were — 
has  been  brought  to  its  noblest  expression  by 
the  English  aristocracy,  whose  tables  liter- 
ally groan  with  costly  viands,  whose  spits 
are  always  turning,  and  whose  scullions  and 


Food  157 

kitchen  wenches  are  as  an  army.  It  is  related 
that  when  a  certain  duke  found  it  necessary 
to  retrench,  and  was  advised  by  his  family 
solicitor  to  get  rid  of  his  fifth,  sixth,  and 
seventh  cooks,  his  grace  remarked,  **But 
,  So-and-so,  a  man  must  have  a  bis- 
cuit!" And  the  English  middle  class  of 
course  faithfully  imitates  to  the  best  of  its 
powers  the  English  upper  class,  and  so  on 
through  the  grades.  Among  all  classes  there 
is  a  rooted  prejudice  against  food  that  hap- 
pens to  be  cheap.  To  this  day  people  who 
eat  escallops  are  rather  looked  down  upon, 
for  no  other  reason  than  that  oysters  run  you 
into  half  a  crown  a  dozen,  while  you  can  get 
excellent  escallops  at  ninepence.  So  the  her- 
ring, the  whiting,  and  other  kinds  of  cheap 
fish  are  considered  little  better  than  offal  by 
persons  who  can  afford  to  pay  for  sole  and 
salmon.  Turtle  soup  is  infinitely  to  be  pre- 
ferred to  any  other  soup  in  the  world  because 
it  is  dearer,  and  champagne  is  drunk,  not  be- 
cause people  like  it,  but  because  it  looks 
swagger  and  testifies  to  the  possession  of 


15^       The  Egregious  English 

means.  These  gustatory  idiosyncrasies  are 
purely  English,  and  obviously  they  are  the 
offspring  of  the  English  love  of  display  and 
superfluity. 

Among  the  lower  classes  the  general  feed- 
ing, though  cheaper,  is  just  as  wasteful  and 
just  as  gross.  Excluding  bread,  it  consists 
chiefly  of  inferior  cuts  of  butcher's  meat  with 
charcuterie  and  dried  fish  thrown  in.  It  has 
been  complained  against  the  Scot  that  he  is 
none  too  clean  a  feeder,  delighting  hugely  in 
inferior  meats.  Haggis  is  held  forth  as  a 
great  exemplar  in  point.  But  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  throughout  England  the  one  kind 
of  emporium  for  the  sale  of  comestibles  which 
flourishes  and  is  unfailingly  popular  is  the 
pork  or  ham-and-beef  shop.  And  here  what 
do  you  obtain?  Why,  exactly  the  meats 
which  gentlemen  of  the  type  of  Mr.  Henley 
describe  as  offal.  They  include,  in  addition 
to  pork  in  and  out  of  season,  pig's  feet,  pig's 
heads,  pig's  liver  and  kidneys,  pig's  blood 
sausages,  the  "savoury  duck"  or  mess  of 
seasoned  remnants,  tripe  boiled  and  raw,  and 


Food  159 

chitterlings.  So  that  the  haggis  of  Scotland 
is  fairly  well  balanced.  I  am  not  suggesting 
for  a  moment  that  the  English  display  other 
than  a  proper  judgment  in  devouring  these 
dainties.  But  if  they  will  favour  the  pork 
shop  and  its  contents,  they  can  scarcely  ex- 
pect to  be  set  down  for  an  angel-bread  and 
manna-eating  people. 

Perhaps  the  chief  scandal  about  English 
feeding  lies  in  the  condition  of  the  English 
hotels.  On  the  Continent  an  hotel  is  an 
establishment  for  the  accommodation  of  trav- 
ellers requiring  food  and  rest.  In  England 
an  hotel  is  an  establishment  for  the  accom- 
modation of  landlords  and  waiters.  ''High 
class  cuisine,"  says  the  tariff  card,  also 
"wines  and  spirits  of  the  best  selected  qual- 
ity." Yet  one's  experience  tells  one  that, 
though  the  bill  will  be  heavy,  neither  the 
cuisine  nor  the  wines  will  be  more  than  pass- 
able, much  less  high  class.  A  menu  which  is 
the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for  ever, 
bad  cooking,  careless  service,  and  a  general 
lack  of  finish,  are  the  things  one  may  expect 


i6o      The  Egregious  English 

at  an  English  hotel  with  the  tolerable  cer- 
tainty of  not  being  disappointed.  To  com- 
plain is  to  draw  forth  the  ill-disguised 
contempt  of  bibulous  head-waiters  and  the 
stiff  apologies  of  haughty  proprietors.  But 
beyond  that  mortal  man  will  never  get,  be- 
cause the  English  hotel  is  an  immemorial  and 
conservative  institution,  and  as  wise  in  its 
own  conceit  as  the  ancient  sphinx.  Of  late 
and  in  London  attempts  have  been  made  to 
organise  hotels  adapted  to  the  best  kind  of 
requirement.  So  far  as  I  am  aware,  only  two 
of  them  have  really  succeeded,  and  the 
charges  at  both  places  are  quite  pro- 
hibitive. 

Closely  identified,  one  might  almost  say 
affiliated,  to  the  English  hotel  is  the  English 
railway-buffet,  of  which  so  much  has  been 
said  in  song  and  story.  The  sheer  horrible- 
ness  of  the  "refreshments "  here  provided  has 
passed  into  a  proverb.  The  English  them- 
selves admit  that  if  you  wish  to  know  the 
worst  about  refreshments,  you  should  drink 
the  railway-buffet  tea  and  partake  of  the 


Food  i6i 

railway-buffet  sandwich.  They  also  ad- 
mit that  for  abominations  in  the  way  of 
aerated  waters,  milk,  beer,  and  whisky,  pas- 
try, cakes,  hard-boiled  eggs,  cold  meats, 
boiled  chicken  and  ham,  and  chops  and 
steaks  from  the  grill,  the  railway-buffet  takes 
the  palm;  and  they  admit  further  that  the 
Hebes  who  dispense  these  comestibles  to  the 
hungry  and  howling  mob  have  the  manners 
of  duchesses.  Yet  the  English  without  their 
railway-buffets  would  be  an  utterly  woe- 
begone and  miserable  people.  Put  an  Eng- 
lishman down  at  a  strange  railway-station 
with  a  half -hour  wait  before  him.  He  has 
but  one  resort :  he  inquires  right  off  for  the 
buffet,  and  there  he  gorges  and  swizzles  till 
the  warning  bell  advises  him  of  the  departure 
of  his  train.  If  there  is  no  buffet,  he  becomes 
a  dejected,  pallid  man,  and  threatens  to  write 
to  the  newspapers.  So  long  as  the  railway- 
buffets  continue  to  exist,  the  English  diges- 
tion can  never  aspire  to  perfection,  even 
though  English  feeding  and  cooking  outside 
railway-stations  became  ideal ;    for  a  single 


1 62       The  Egregious  English 

"meal"  of  railway-buffet  viands  would  per- 
manently disorganise  the  digestive  capabili- 
ties of  the  most  ostrichy  ostrich  that  ever 
walked  on  two  legs. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

LAW   AND    ORDER 

The  English  love  to  be  ruled,  just  as  eels 
are  said  to  take  delight  in  being  skinned. 
They  hold  that  a  nation  which  is  properly- 
ruled  cannot  fail  of  happiness.  Their  notion 
of  rule  may  be  summed  up  in  the  phrase, 
'  *  Law  and  order. ' '  The  Englishman  believes 
that  law  and  order  are  heaven-sent  blessings 
especially  invented  for  his  behoof.  ''Where 
else  in  the  world,"  he  will  ask  you  grand- 
iloquently, *'do  you  get  such  law  and  such 
order  as  you  get  in  England — the  land  of  the 
free?"  If  anybody  picks  his  pocket,  or  en- 
croaches upon  his  land,  or  infringes  his  patent 
rights,  or  diverts  his  water-courses,  the  Eng- 
lishman knows  exactly  what  to  do.  There  is 
the  law.  They  keep  it  on  tap  in  great  build- 
163 


1 64       The  Egregious  English 

ings  called  courts,  and  persons  in  wigs  serve 
out  to  you  precisely  what  you  may  deserve 
with  great  gusto  and  solemnity.  The  man 
picked  your  pocket,  did  he?  Three  months' 
imprisonment  for  the  man.  Somebody  is 
making  colourable  imitations  of  your  patent 
dolls'  eyes.  Well,  you  can  apply  for  an  in- 
junction.    And  so  on. 

This  is  law.  All  Englishmen  believe  in  it, 
particularly  those  who  have  never  had  any. 
When  it  comes  to  the  worst,  and  the  Eng- 
lishman finds  that  he  really  must  take  on  a 
little  of  his  own  beautiful  specific,  he  usually 
begins  by  falling  into  something  of  a  flutter. 
Those  bewigged  and  sedate  persons  seated  in 
great  chairs,  with  bouquets  in  front  of  them 
and  policemen  to  bawl  ''Silence!"  for  them, 
begin  to  have  a  new  meaning  for  the  English- 
man. Hitherto  he  has  regarded  them  com- 
placently as  the  bodily  representatives  of  the 
law  in  a  free  country.  He  has  smacked  his 
lips  over  them,  rejoiced  in  their  learning,  wit, 
and  acumen,  warmed  at  the  notion  of  their 
dignity,  and  thanked  God  that  he  belonged 


Law  and  Order  165 

to  a  free  people — free  England.  Now,  when 
it  comes  to  a  trifling  personal  encounter  be- 
fore this  mountain  of  dignity — this  mountain 
of  dignity  perched  on  a  mountain  of  prece- 
dent, as  it  were — the  Englishman  shivers  and 
looks  pale.  But  his  solicitor  and  his  counsel 
and  his  counsel's  clerk — particularly  his 
counsel's  clerk — soon  put  him  at  his  ease,  and 
instead  of  withdrawing  at  the  feel  of  the 
bath,  he  is  fain  to  plump  right  in.  Whether 
he  comes  out  on  top  or  gets  beaten  is  another 
matter;  in  any  case,  the  trouble  about  the 
thing  is  that,  win  or  lose,  it  is  infinitely  and 
appallingly  costly.  Law,  the  Englishman's 
birthright,  is  not  to  be  given  away.  If  you 
want  any,  you  must  pay  for  it,  and  pay  for 
it  handsomely,  too.  Otherwise  you  can  go 
without.  The  English  adage  to  the  effect 
that  there  is  one  law  for  the  rich  and  an- 
other for  the  poor  is  one  of  those  adages 
which  are  very  subtly  true.  There  is  a  law 
for  the  rich,  certainly.  There  is  also  a  law 
for  the  poor — namely,  no  law  at  all.  On  the 
whole  the  Englishman  who  has  not  had  his 


1 66       The  Egregious  English 

pristine  dream  of  English  law  shattered  by 
contact  with  the  realities  is  to  envied.  All 
other  Englishmen,  whether  their  experience 
has  lain  in  County  Courts,  High  Courts,  or 
Courts  of  Appeal,  talk  lovingly  of  English 
law  with  their  tongues  in  their  cheeks. 

With  respect  to  order,  the  much  bepraised 
handmaiden  of  law,  I  do  not  think  that  the 
English  get  half  so  much  of  her  as  they  think 
they  do.  She  costs  them  a  pretty  penny. 
The  up-keep  of  her  police  and  magistrates 
and  general  myrmidons  runs  the  Englishman 
into  some  noble  taxation ;  yet  where  shall  you 
find  an  English  community  that  is  orderly  if 
even  an  infinitesimal  section  of  it  has  made 
up  its  mind  to  be  otherwise?  In  London  at 
the  present  moment  there  are  whole  districts 
which  it  is  not  safe  for  a  decently  dressed 
person  to  traverse  even  in  broad  daylight; 
and  these  districts  are  not  by  any  means 
slum  districts,  but  parts  of  the  metropolis  in 
which  lie  important  arteries  of  traffic.  There 
is  not  a  square  mile  of  the  metropolitan  area 
which  does  not  boast  its  organised  gang  of 


Law  and  Order  167 

daylight  robbers,  purse-snatchers,  watch- 
snatchers,  and  bullies  who  would  beat  a  man 
insensible  for  fourpence,  and  whose  great 
weapon  is  the  belt. 

For  convenience'  sake  these  people  have 
been  grouped  together  under  the  term 
"Hooligan."  The  police — the  far-famed 
London  police — can  do  nothing  with  them. 
They  admit  that  they  are  ineradicable  and 
irrepressible.  The  magistrates  and  the  news- 
papers keep  on  asseverating  that  ''something 
must  be  done."  That  something  apparently 
consists  in  the  capture  of  a  stray  specimen  of 
the  tribe,  who  is  forthwith  given  three 
months,  with  perhaps  a  little  whipping 
thrown  in.  But  hooliganism  is  a  business 
that  continues  to  flourish  like  the  green  bay- 
tree,  and  London  is  no  safer  to-day  than  it 
was  in  the  time  of  the  garotters.  As  the  belt 
is  the  weapon  of  the  London  robber,  and  as 
Hooligan  is  his  name,  so  we  find  in  all  the 
larger  provincial  towns  gangs  of  scoundrels 
with  special  instruments  and  slang  names  of 
their  own.     In  Lancashire  and  the  Black 


1 68       The  Egregious  English 

Country  kicking  appears  to  be  the  favourite 
method  of  deahng  with  the  order-loving  citi- 
zen. In  some  of  the  northern  towns  the 
knuckle-duster,  the  sand-bag,  and  the  loaded 
stick  are  requisitioned;  and  in  all  cases  we 
are  told  the  police  are  powerless.  The  fact 
is,  that,  on  the  whole,  England  cannot  be 
reckoned  an  orderly  country.  The  "hooli- 
gans" and  their  provincial  imitators  are  just 
straws  that  show  the  way  of  the  wind.  When 
these  persons  say :  *'  We  will  do  such  and  such 
things  in  contravention  of  the  law,"  there  is 
practically  nothing  to  stop  them.  In  the 
same  way,  when  a  community  determines  to 
run  amuck  on  an  occasion  of  ''national  re- 
joicing" (such  as  the  late  Maf eking  night),  or 
because  a  strike  is  in  progress,  or  a  charity 
dinner  has  been  badly  served,  or  the  vaccina- 
tion laws  are  being  enforced,  it  does  so  at  its 
own  sweet  will,  and  order  can  be  hanged. 
Once  a  week,  too, — namely,  on  Saturday 
nights, — English  order,  like  the  free  list  at 
the  theatres,  is  entirely  suspended.  Satur- 
day night  is  the  recognised  and  inviolable 


Law  and  Order  169 

hour  of  the  mob.  Throughout  the  country 
your  flaring  English  gin-palaces  are  at  their 
fiaringest ;  the  beer-pumps  sing  together  with 
a  myriad  voices,  and  the  clink  of  glasses  takes 
the  evening  air  with  beauty.  Until,  perhaps, 
eight  o'clock  all  goes  well ;  then  the  quarrel- 
someness which  the  English  masses  extract 
from  their  cups  begins  to  assert  itself,  and  the 
chuckers-out  (in  what  other  country  in  the 
world  are  there  chuckers-out  ?)  and  the  police 
begin  to  be  busy.  Till  long  after  midnight 
their  hands  are  full,  and  it  is  not  until  the 
Sabbath  is  a  couple  of  hours  old  that  the 
English  masses  seek  their  rest.  In  the  mean- 
time what  squalid  indiscretions,  what  sins 
against  humanity,  what  outrages,  have  not 
been  committed?  The  bare  consumption  of 
drink  alone  has  been  appalling ;  the  bicker- 
ings, angry  shoutings,  indulgences  in  pugilism 
and  hair-pulling,  have  been  infinite  ;  and 
on  Monday  morning  the  police-courts  will 
have  their  usual  plethora  of  drunks  and 
disorderlies,  wife-beatings  and  assaults  on 
the  police,  with,  perhaps,  a  case  or  two  of 


ijo      The  Egregious  English 

manslaughter  and  a  murder  to  put  the  crown 
on  things. 

In  the  main,  therefore,  law  and  order 
may  be  counted  among  John  Bull's  many- 
illusions.  They  are,  as  one  might  say,  sweet 
to  meditate  upon;  they  look  all  right  on 
paper,  and  they  sound  all  right  in  the  mouths 
of  orators.  For  the  rest  the  Englishman  who 
is  wise  smiles  and  keeps  a  folded  tale.  One 
may  note,  before  leaving  this  entertaining 
subject,  that  in  England  lawyers  and  laymen 
alike  take  a  special  pride  in  admitting  a  cer- 
tain ignorance.  At  the  bare  mention  of  Scots 
law  they  lift  up  pious  hands  and  impious 
eyes  and  say,  ''Thank  Heaven,  we  know 
nothing  about  it!" 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

EDUCATION 

Lord  Rosebery,  whom  the  worthy  Mr. 
Crosland  dislikes  on  purely  racial  grounds,  is 
usually  credited  as  the  originator  of  what  has 
latterly  become  the  Englishman's  watchword, 
"Educate,  educate,  educate!"  Whether  it 
was  the  Scotch  half  of  Lord  Rosebery  or 
the  English  half  that  prompted  him  to 
this  simple  human  cry,  I  shall  not  pretend 
to  say.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  certain 
that  when  his  Lordship  offered  the  English 
such  a  profound  piece  of  advice,  he  gave 
them  exactly  the  counsel  that  they  most 
needed;  for,  though  the  English  boast  of 
their  knowledge,  though  they  are  the  ar- 
rogant possessors  of  seats  of  learning  out 
of  which  can  come  nothing  but  perfection, 
171 


172       The  Egregious  English 

though  they  possess  ancient  universities  and 
ancient  public  schools,  though  they  have 
a  school-board  system  and  free  education, 
and  though  their  country  is  overrun  with 
middle-sized  men  who  play  billiards  and  drink 
bitter  beer  and  call  themselves  schoolmasters, 
they  are  indubitably  and  unmistakably  an 
uneducated  people. 

Until  the  passing  of  the  Elementary  Edu- 
cation Act  of  1870,  learning  in  England 
amounted  practically  to  a  Itixury.  Only  the 
rich  might  be  permitted  to  know  things.  It 
was  a  case  of  schools,  colleges,  and  univer- 
sities for  the  sons  of  noblemen  and  gentle- 
men. The  rascally  lower  classes  might  look 
after  themselves.  It  is  open  to  question 
whether  the  rascally  lower  classes  were  not, 
on  the  whole,  educationally  better  off  in  that 
day  than  they  are  at  present.  That,  how- 
ever, is  by  the  way.  But  in  the  later  sixties 
the  reformer  got  his  eagle  eye  on  the  rascally 
lower  classes.  He  perceived  that  the  rascally 
lower  classes  were  in  bad  case.  They  got 
drunk,  they  used  foul  language,  they  smoked 


Education  i  tz 

short  pipes,  and,  Heaven  help  them!  they 
could  not  read.  Anticipating  the  English  or 
Scotch  half  of  Lord  Rosebery,  as  the  case 
may  be,  the  reformer  said,  ''Educate,  edu- 
cate, educate!"  And  it  was  so.  The  Eng- 
lish have  been  educating  ever  since.  They 
educated  to  such  purpose  that  thirty  years 
later  Lord  Rosebery  felt  it  incumbent  upon 
himself  to  bid  them  educate,  educate,  edu- 
cate! In  those  thirty  years  the  rascally 
lower  classes  learned  somewhat.  They  were 
supposed  to  discover,  inter  alia,  that  know- 
ledge was  power.  They  were  told  that  a 
hodman  who  could  write  his  name  was  a  bet- 
ter hodman  than  the  hodman  whose  sign- 
manual  was  a  cross.  They  were  led  shrewdly 
to  infer  that  their  pastors  and  masters  and 
general  betters  owed  their  supremacy  to 
knowledge;  and  that  if  they,  the  rascally 
lower  classes,  would  only  instruct  their  child- 
ren, these  same  children  might  wax  great  in 
the  land  and  carry  burdens  no  more.  The 
rascally  lower  classes  sent  their  children  to 
school,  some  of  them  cheerfully,  some  of  them 


174       The  Egregious  English 

with  groans;  and  the  stars  began  to  shme 
over  England's  darkness. 

What  has  come  to  pass  all  men  know. 
Every  Englishman  gets  the  smatterings  of  a 
literary  education,  and  believes  in  his  heart 
that  he  was  cut  out  by  the  Almighty  to  be  a 
clerk.  The  honest  trades  and  handicrafts  are 
no  longer  desirable  in  the  minds  of  English 
youth.  To  take  one's  coat  off  with  a  view  to 
livelihood  is  a  business  for  dolts  and  fools. 
Advertise  in  England  for  an  office-boy  and 
you  shall  receive  five  hundred  applications; 
advertise  for  a  boy  to  learn  plumbing,  and 
you  will  be  offered,  perhaps,  two  daft-looking 
lads,  who  after  much  thrashing  have  managed 
to  attain  the  age  of  fourteen  years. 

The  fact  is,  that  the  English  do  not  know 
what  education  means.  At  the  public 
schools,  and  at  the  universities  of  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  education  has  become,  to  a  great 
extent,  a  social  matter.  You  go  to  these 
places  to  learn,  certainly;  but  you  also  go 
with  a  view  to  the  formation  of  a  desirable 
and  influential  acquaintance,  and  to  get  upon 


Education  i75 

your  forehead  the  mark  which  is  supposed 
to  make  glorious  the  pubHc-school  and  uni- 
versity-bred Englishman.  As  a  general  rule, 
that  mark  is  altogether  imperceptible  to  the 
eyes  of  the  unelect,  who,  if  the  truth  must  be 
told,  discover  the  university  man  not  so  much 
by  his  manners  or  conversation  as  by  his 
ineptitudes.  When  one  comes  to  consider 
the  principles  upon  which  the  public-school 
and  university  system  are  worked,  one  is 
quite  prepared  to  admit  that,  were  it  not  for 
the  element  of  snobbery  patent  in  the  system, 
English  public  schools  and  universities  alike 
would  in  the  long  rim  have  to  be  disestab- 
lished. As  it  is,  they  are  the  conventional 
resort  of  aristocratic  adolescence,  and  per- 
mitted to  exist  only  on  condition  that,  if  a 
low  middle-class  person  can  find  the  money 
and  keep  up  the  style,  he,  too,  may  join  the 
angelic  host.  To  the  man  of  temperament, 
to  the  scholar,  to  the  man  who  loves  learning 
for  learning's  sake,  the  English  universities 
have  precious  little  to  offer. 

After  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  one  turns  to 


176       The  Egregious  English 

London  and  the  non-resident  foundations, 
all  of  them,  I  believe,  modem.  Here,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  the  English  err  again.  Broadly 
speaking,  these  institutions,  wittingly  or  un- 
wittingly, devote  their  energies  to  the  prepar- 
ation of  young  men  for  the  Civil  Service.  If 
you  are  an  English  board-school  teacher  at 
£So  a  year  and  you  discover  that  a  second- 
class  clerk  in  the  Circumlocution  Department 
commences  at  £s^o  a  year,  and  that,  roughly, 
the  examination  to  be  passed  is  the  same  as 
for  matriculation  at  London,  you  naturally 
go  in  bald-headed  for  matriculation  at  Lon- 
don. For  the  learning  you  get  by  these 
efforts  you  have  not  the  smallest  respect.  If, 
on  presenting  yourself  for  examination  by  the 
Civil  Service  Commissioners,  you  come  out 
sufficiently  high  on  the  list  to  secure  an  ap- 
pointment, well  and  good.  If  not,  your 
labour  has  been  wasted.  It  is  this  spirit 
which  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  English  ignor- 
ance. With  them,  learning,  education,  is  a 
means  to  an  end,  and  not  in  the  least  its  own 
exceeding  great  reward.     Hence  a  properly 


Education  i77 

educated  Englishman  is  almost  as  rare  as  a 
blue  rose.  For  the  masses — the  rascally 
lower  orders,  that  is  to  say — ^there  are  the 
board  schools.  Here  for  thirty  years  past 
has  been  enacted  about  the  sweetest  travesty 
of  education  that  the  mind  of  man  could  con- 
ceive. For  the  teaching  of  the  children  of 
the  rascally  lower  orders,  the  wise  English 
Government,  with  the  assistance  of  the  wise 
English  school  boards,  has  invented  what  is 
to  all  intents  and  purposes  a  new  type  of  man. 
And  his  name  shall  be  called  Schoolmaster. 
He  began  Heaven  knows  how.  But  if  you 
inquire  into  him,  you  will  find  that  he  has 
spent  three  years  at  a  Government  training 
college,  and  that  prior  to  this  experience  he 
was  for  some  years  a  pupil  teacher ;  also  that 
he  is  a  son  of  the  people,  and  that  his  father 
drove  an  engine  or  kept  a  shop.  In  these 
latter  circumstances  he  was,  perhaps,  fortun- 
ate. The  marvellous  fact  about  him  is  that, 
in  spite  of  his  years  of  pupil-teachership  and 
of  his  three  years  at  a  Government  training 
college,  he  is  not  a  man  of  either  learning  or 


178       The  Egregious  English 

culture.  I  am  told  that  an  English  pupil 
teacher  is  not  expected  to  fash  himself  by  the 
study  of  either  Latin  or  Greek.  Two  books 
of  Euclid  will  see  him  through  the  stiffest  of 
his  examinations.  He  does  not  need  to  have 
even  a  nodding  acquaintance  with  modem 
languages;  and  as  for  science,  if  he  really 
wants  some,  he  must  pick  it  up  at  evening 
classes.  Even  when  he  passes  into  the  Gov- 
ernment training  college, — where,  by  the  way, 
he  is  instructed  and  boarded  and  lodged 
gratis, — his  studies  do  not  become  in  any 
way  profound.  The  history  of  England, 
the  geography  of  the  world,  arithmetic 
according  to  Barnard  Smith,  algebra  ac- 
cording to  Dr.  Todhunter,  Latin  and 
Greek  according  to  Dr.  William  Smith 
(Part  I.),  with  a  little  French,  —  a  very 
little  French, — ^bring  him  to  the  end  of  his 
tether. 

Really,  the  whole  business  is  childish.  Any 
youth  of  average  capacity  should  get  through 
the  entire  three  years'  course  in  six  weeks. 
Of  course,  there  is  the  so-called  technical 


Education  1 79 

training  to  reckon  with ;  that  is  to  say,  a  man 
at  one  of  these  colleges  is  supposed  to  spend 
a  great  deal  of  his  time,  and  no  doubt  does, 
in  perfecting  himself  as  a  teacher;  but  one 
would  have  thought  that  actual  practice  in 
an  ordinary  school  would  be  the  best  instruc- 
tor in  this  respect.  In  any  case,  nobody  can 
consider  closely  the  English  schoolmaster  as 
manufactured  at  Government  training  col- 
leges without  perceiving  that  the  Govern- 
ment turns  out  a  very  remarkable  article 
indeed.  I  have  no  desire  to  belittle  a  hard- 
worked,  and  probably  underpaid,  body  of 
public  servants.  Their  profession  is  a  thank- 
less one.  I  do  not  think  for  a  moment  a 
single  man  of  them  went  into  it  with  his  eyes 
open,  and  I  know  for  a  certainty  that  the 
school  boards  and  the  Government  between 
them  have  so  hedged  it  round  with  petty 
annoyances  that  a  man  possessed  of  feeling 
must  loathe  it.  It  is  probably  this  feeling  of 
loathing  of  his  work  that  keeps  the  English 
schoolmaster  down.  He  knows  that  it  is 
vain  for  him  to  go  a  hair's-breadth  out  of  the 


i8o      The  Egregious  English 

beaten  tracks.  The  school  boards  must  have 
grants;  the  Government  inspectors  must  be 
satisfied.  There  is  only  one  method  of  en- 
suring these  desirable  consummations:  that 
one  way  amounts  to  sheer  mechanism  and 
slog.  The  English  schoolmaster  must  have 
no  temperament.  If  he  possess  such  a  thing, 
he  is  bound  to  come  to  great  grief.  Hence 
the  whole  weight  of  the  English  system  is, 
from  first  to  last,  employed  in  the  work  of 
knocking  temperament  out  of  him  and  keep- 
ing it  out.  His  three  years'  free  training 
particularly  tend  to  make  a  slack,  unthink- 
ing sap-head  of  him.  He  gets  a  parchment 
which  entitles  him  to  call  himself  a  certifi- 
cated teacher,  and  he  is  taught  to  imagine 
that  for  downright  learning  there  is  nothing 
like  himself  under  the  sun.  In  this  latter 
surmise  he  is  quite  right.  The  schoolmaster 
in  England,  though  he  will  probably  be  an- 
other quarter  of  a  century  waking  up  to  the 
fact,  counts  for  next  to  nothing.  Men  of 
parts  avoid  him;  men  of  no  parts  laugh  at 
him.     For  himself,  I  imagine,  he  will  long 


Education  i8i 

continue  to  believe  in  his  heart  that  he  is  a 
great  man,  a  Httle  lower,  perhaps,  than  a 
parson,  but  certainly  a  little  higher  than 
a  policeman. 

The  real  value  of  English  education,  like 
the  real  value  of  most  other  things,  becomes 
apparent  when  it  is  put  to  the  test  of  practi- 
cal affairs.  Any  employer  of  labour  will  tell 
you  that,  whether  an  English  boy  come  to 
him  from  a  board  school  or  a  school  of  a 
higher  grade,  whether  he  be  the  son  of  a 
ploughman  or  of  what  the  English  call  a  pro- 
fessional man,  he  is  always  and  inevitably  a 
good  deal  of  a  fool.  You  have  to  teach  him 
how  to  lick  stamps.  You  have  to  teach  him 
that,  excepting  in  so  far  as  he  can  write  and 
read,  what  he  has  learned  at  school  is  not 
wanted;  you  have  to  teach  him  how  many 
beans  make  five ;  you  have  to  teach  him  that 
punctuality  and  accuracy  are  worth  more  in 
business  than  all  the  botany  he  ever  learned ; 
and  all  the  time  you  have  to  watch  him  like 
a  cat  watching  a  mouse.  "  Fire  out  the 
fools!"  once  exclaimed  Dr.  Robertson  NicoU. 


1 82       The  Egregious  English 

I  do  not  think  it  is  too  much  to  say  that,  if 
the  average  English  employer  took  the  hint, 
he  would  have  nobody  left  to  do  his  business 
for  him. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

RECREATION 

To  amuse  oneself  is  the  great  art  of  life. 
From  the  English  point  of  view,  the  finest 
kind  of  amusement  is  to  be  obtained  by  kill- 
ing something.  Fox-himting,  deer-stalking, 
grouse-shooting,  pheasant-shooting,  pigeon- 
shooting,  and  even  rabbit-shooting  still  stand 
for  a  great  deal  among  the  best  class  of  Eng- 
lishmen. Of  old,  the  masses  had  their  bull- 
baitings,  dog-fights,  and  cock-fights.  These, 
however,  are  no  longer  regarded  as  legitimate 
forms  of  amusement,  and  the  masses,  being 
for  various  reasons  unable  to  hunt  foxes  and 
shoot  pheasants,  have  to  fall  back  on  recrea- 
tions in  which  killing  takes  place  only  by 
accident.  There  is  the  race-course  and  the 
football-field.  The  masses  are  expected  to 
183 


1 84      The  Egregious  English 

consider  themselves  happy.  Outside  racing 
and  football,  however,  the  come-day,  go-day 
Englishman  has  a  good  many  facilities  for  rec- 
reation. Although  in  most  communities  the 
grandfatherly  authorities  have  abolished  the 
old  feasts  and  fairs,  which  provided  periodic 
saturnalia  of  merry-go-rounds  and  wild-beast 
shows,  it  is  a  poor  townlet  which  cannot 
nowadays  boast  its  permanent  settlement 
of  cocoanut-shiesand  shooting-galleries,  where 
on  Saturday  evenings  the  true-bom  English- 
man may  find  substantial  joys.  Then,  for  the 
Londoner,  in  addition  to  this  kind  of  thing, 
there  are  from  time  to  time  provided  vast 
orgies  at  Hampstead  Heath,  the  Welsh  Harp, 
Bamet  Fair,  and  other  choice  resorts.  Here, 
again,  it  is  a  case  of  cocoanuts,  shooting-gal- 
leries, swing-boats,  steam-roundabouts,  and 
aerial  flights,  backed  up  with  donkey-rides,  a 
free  use  of  the  tickler  and  the  ladies'  teaser, 
unlimited  confetti  throwing,  and  unlimited 
beer.  These  amusements,  of  course,  are  on 
the  face  of  them  quite  innocent,  and  equally 
English  and  unintellectual. 


Recreation  185 

Failing  merry-go-rounds  and  cocoanut- 
shies,  the  delights  of  which  are  apt  to  pall, 
the  English  masses  have  still  left  to  them 
their  main  redoubt  of  rational  enjoyment, 
which,  for  reasons  no  man  may  skill,  is  called 
the  music-hall.  The  English  music-hall  is 
practically  an  expansion  or  efflorescence  of 
the  old-fashioned  "sing-song."  Sixty  years 
ago  the  man  who  went  out  to  take  a  stoup  of 
ale  at  his  inn  was  accustomed  to  be  regaled 
with  a  little  music  free  of  charge.  Mine  host 
had  possessed  himself  of  a  second-hand  piano, 
and  secured  the  services  of  some  broken- 
down  musician  to  play  it  for  him.  There 
was  a  great  singing  of  old  songs,  and  the  time 
sped  merrily,  as  it  did  in  the  golden  age. 
These  feasts  of  harmony  brought  custom,  and 
in  course  of  time  the  evening  ''  sing-songs  "  at 
certain  hostelries  became  organised  institu- 
tions and  were  run  on  lines  of  great  enter- 
prise, the  piano  being  supplemented  by  an 
orchestra,  and  the  pianist  by  a  number  of 
professional  singers  and  entertainers.  Within 
the  last  fifty  years  the  ''sing-song"  has  been 


1 86       The  Egregious  English 

separated  from  its  parent  the  alehouse,  and 
has  developed  into  the  music-hall.  To-day 
the  English  music-halls  are  almost  as  thick 
on  the  ground  as  churches  and  chapels.  In 
the  metropolis  you  would  have  a  difficulty  to 
count  them.  In  the  provinces  every  town 
of  size  supports  two  or  three  halls,  and  in- 
sists on  London  talent  and  London  style. 
The  class  of  entertainment  provided  may  be 
costly  and  amusing,  but  it  is  certainly  not 
edifying.  The  performers  almost  to  a  man, 
and  one  might  say  to  a  woman,  are  persons 
who  can  be  considered  ''artists"  only  in  the 
broadest  sense,  and  whose  ignorance  and  vul- 
garity are  as  colossal  as  their  salaries. 

Roughly,  the  entertainment  may  be  di- 
vided into  two  sections,  the  one  concerned 
with  feats  of  strength,  juggling,  and  the  like, 
and  the  other  with  laughter-making  and 
vocalism.  As  regards  the  first  of  these  sec- 
tions, a  man  who  can  balance  a  horse  and 
trap  on  the  end  of  his  chin  appears  to  give 
great  satisfaction  to  an  English  audience. 
Why  this  should  be  so,  nobody  knows.     The 


Recreation  187 

good  purpose  that  may  be  served  by  balanc- 
ing a  horse  and  trap  on  the  end  of  one's  chin 
is  not  obvious;  but  the  EngHsh  masses  are 
ravished  by  the  spectacle.  They  also  have 
a  great  fondness  for  the  stout  lady  who 
catches  cannon-balls  on  the  back  of  her  neck, 
for  the  other  stout  lady  who  risks  her  life 
nightly  on  the  flying  trapeze,  for  the  gentle- 
man who  walks  about  the  stage  with  a  piano 
under  one  arm  and  a  live  mule  under  the 
other,  and  for  the  gentleman  who  rides  the 
bicycle  standing  on  his  head.  To  the  mind 
of  the  English  masses  these  are  marvels  and 
well  worth  the  money.  They  give  a  zest  to 
life,  they  provide  material  for  conversation, 
and  their  attraction  seems  perennial. 

The  great  stand-by  of  the  halls,  however, 
is  the  laughter-making  and  vocal  depart- 
ment. Here  shine  the  great  stars  whose 
names  are  familiar  on  English  lips  as  house- 
hold words.  Here  is  purveyed  the  culture, 
the  song,  and  the  humour  of  the  English 
masses.  It  is  from  the  music-hall  stage  that 
the  vast  majority  of  Englishmen  take  their 


i88       The  Egregious  English 

tone  and  their  sentiment.  That  renowned 
comedian,  Fred  Fetchem,  strolls  on  to  the 
boards  of  the  Frivolity  some  night,  and, 
assuming  a  fiendish  grin,  exclaims  idiotically ; 
"There  's  'air!"  Next  morning  and  for 
many  weeks  thereafter  all  England  says; 
"There's  'air!"  on  any  and  every  occasion. 
"What  ho  she  bumps!"  "  Now,  we  sha'n't  be 
long,"  "Not  half,"  "Did  he?"  and  similar 
catchwords,  all  popular  and  all  meaningless, 
capture  the  English  imagination  in  their  turn, 
and  for  a  season,  at  any  rate.  Englishmen  can 
say  nothing  else.  It  is  the  same  with  the 
music-hall  song.  Always  there  are  current  in 
England  three  or  four  "songs  of  the  hour," 
which  every  Englishman  worth  the  name 
sings,  whistles,  or  hums;  and  always  these 
songs,  from  whatever  point  of  view  regarded, 
are  of  the  most  blithering  and  bathotic  nat- 
ure. At  the  present  moment  the  prime  and 
universal  favourite  is  that  pathetic  ditty. 
Everybody  's  Loved  by  Some  One.  For  the 
benefit  of  the  English,  I  quote  the  first 
stanza  and  the  chorus  of  this  work : 


Recreation  189 

A  lady  stood  within  a  busy  city, 

Her  darling  little  daughter  by  her  side; 

She'd  stopped  to  buy  a  bunch  of  pretty  violets 

From  a  ragged  little  orphan  she  espied. 

The  words  she  spoke  were  kinder  than  the  boy  had 

heard  for  years; 
And  in  reply  to  what  she  asked,  he  murmur' d  through 

his  tears, 


Everybody's  loved  by   some   one,   everybody 

knows  that's  true. 
Some  have  father  and  mother  dear  ;   sister  and 

brother,  too. 
All  the  time  that  I  remember,  since  I  was  a  mite 

so  small, 
I  seem  to  be  the  only  one  that  nobody  loves  at 

all. 


With  this  enchanting  song  the  English 
welkin  resounds  by  day  and  night.  The 
great,  broad-shouldered,  genial  Englishman, 
full  of  four-ale  and  bad  whisky,  howls  it  in 
chorus  at  his  favourite  ''public,"  work-girls 
sing  it  in  factories,  mothers  rock  their  chil- 
dren to  sleep  with  it,  and  every  English 
urchin  whistles  or  shouts  it  at  you  with  un- 
flagging zest.  Of  course,  there  are  others; 
for  example,  there  is  / ' w  a  Policeman,  which 
goes  like  this: 


iQo      The  Egregious  English 

In  the  inky  hour  of  midnight,  when  the  clock  is  striking 
three, 

As  I  stroll  along  my  beet-root,  many  curious  things  I 
see: 

Ragged  urchins  stagger  past  me  to  their  mansions  in 
the  west; 

Millionaires,  through  cold  and  hunger,  on  our  doorsteps 
sink  to  rest; 

Dirty  dustmen  in  their  broughams,  off  to  supper  at  the 
"Cri."; 

Then  "Bill  Sykes,"  the  burglar,  passes,  with  an  eye- 
glass in  his  eye. 

Such  are  the  sights  I    witness  when  I  am  on  my 

beat, 
Filling  my  heart  with  sawdust,  filling  my  boots 

with  feet; 
Covering  half  the  pavement  up  with  my  "plates 

of  meat," 
Though  mother  sent  to  say  that  I  'm  a  p'liceman — 

which — need  one  remark? — is  intended  for 
what  the  Scots  are  supposed  to  call  '*wut." 
Also,  there  is  He  Stopped: 

Pendlebury  Plum  had  a  wart  on  his  gum, 

And  he  rubbed  it  with  sand-paper  hard; 
The  wart  on  his  gum  made  Plum  fairly  hum. 

When  it  stuck  out  about  half  a  yard. 
The  wart  grew  so  quick,  when  he  rubbed  it  with  a 
brick, 

Till  it  looked  like  a  short  billiard-cue ; 
Said  Plum  to  himself,  "I  shall  die  on  the  shelf, 

For  I'm  darned  if  I  know  what  to  do." 


Recreation  tgt 

So  he  went  and  got  a  pick-axe  and  shov'd  it 

underneath, 
Then  he  lifted  up  his  jaw,  and  he  swallowed  all 

his  teeth; 
Then  he  stopped ! 

The  verses  I  have  quoted  are  a  good,  true, 
and  fair  sample  of  the  kind  of  thing  that 
finds  favour  among  the  EngHsh  masses.  I 
do  not  think  that  anything  better  is  being 
proffered,  and  it  is  pretty  certain  that  any- 
thing less  inane  would  be  doomed  to  failure. 
The  fact  is  that  the  English  mind  in  the  lump 
is  flat,  coarse,  and  maggoty,  and  the  English 
understanding  is  as  the  understanding  of 
a  feeble  and  ill-bred  child.  A  couple  of 
generations  ago  the  songs  popular  among 
Englishmen  had  some  claim  to  coherence, 
decency,  and  common  sense  ;  nowadays, 
however,  the  Englishman  admits  that  "he 
cannot  sing  the  old  songs. "  He  has  gone  far- 
ther and  fared  worse,  and  among  the  many 
symptoms  of  his  decadence,  none  is  more 
pronounced  than  his  easy  toleration  of  the 
balderdash  that  is  being  served  up  to  him 
by  the '"alls." 


CHAPTER  XX 

STOCK   EXCHANGE 

There  is  nothing  in  England  more  as- 
tounding or  more  tigerish  than  the  city 
man.  EngHshmen  have  a  fixed  idea  that 
they  are  the  soul  of  generosity,  indifferent  to 
money,  and  not  in  the  least  sordid.  When 
they  are  put  to  it  for  a  type  of  sheer  greedi- 
ness it  pleases  them  to  point  a  finger  at  the 
Scot.  Yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  of 
late  years  the  desire  for  riches  has  become 
the  absorbing  English  passion.  The  osten- 
tation and  vulgar  displays  of  the  aristocracy 
and  the  newly  rich  have  stirred  the  middle- 
class  English  heart  to  envy.  How  comes  it 
that  such  and  such  a  man  sleeps  on  lilies  and 
eats  roses?     He  has  "means,"   my  friend. 

And  what  are  "means"?    Just  money.     If 
192 


Stock  Exchange  193 

you  are  going  to  be  happy  in  this  life,  if  you 
insist  upon  a  full  paunch  of  the  choicest — 
upon  the  ease  and  softness  which  are  so  grate- 
ful to  decadent  persons,  if  you  would  be  in  a 
position  to  possess  all  that  the  soul  of  the 
decadent  person  covets,  you  really  must  have 
money.  And  as  you  are  a  middle  class  Eng- 
lishman whose  people  have  omitted  to  leave 
you  a  million  or  so,  it  is  very  awkward  for 
you.  Life  is  short ;  the  cup  goes  round  but 
once. 

You  have  ;£5oo.  How  is  it  to  be  made 
into  £50,000,  and  that  while  the  flush  of 
youth  still  incarnadines  your  ambitious 
cheek?  There  is  only  one  way:  you  must 
speculate — ^judiciously,  if  you  can;  but  you 
must  speculate.  You  are  an  Englishman 
and  a  sportsman,  and  sometimes  you  get 
your  ;^5 0,000.  Then  all  the  world  marvels 
and  would  fain  do  likewise,  so  that  the  ball 
is  kept  rolling.  It  is  a  ball  full  of  money, 
and  it  rolls  cityward.  The  generous,  open- 
handed  Englishmen  who  are  the  City  take  as 

much  as  they  want  and  toss  you  the  balance. 
13 


194      The  Egregious  English 

The  game  is  as  fashionable  as  ping-pong: 
everybody  plays  it,  and,  win  or  lose,  every- 
body calls  it  the  Stock  Exchange.  I  am  told 
that  the  Stock  Exchange  proper  is  a  reput- 
able institution  and  essential  to  the  well- 
being  of  the  country.  I  do  not  doubt  this 
for  a  moment ;  but  round  it  there  has  grown 
up  a  specious  and  parasitical  finance  which  is 
rapidly  transforming  the  English  into  a 
nation  of  pimters.  **  Fortunes  made  while 
you  wait,"  is  the  lure  to  which  the  latter-day 
Englishman  has  been  found  infallibly  to  re- 
spond. The  remnant  of  the  common  sense 
possessed  by  his  excellent  grandparents 
arouses  in  him  a  sneaking  suspicion  that  the 
golden  promises  of  the  outside  broker  and 
the  bucket-shop  keeper  are  not  to  be  de- 
pended upon.  Yet  he  reads  in  his  morning 
paper  that  no  end  of  stocks  and  shares  have 
risen  a  point  or  dropped  a  point,  as  the  case 
may  be,  and  he  knows  that  if  he  had  been  in 
on  the  right  side  he  would  have  made  more 
money  in  a  few  hours  than  his  excellent 
grandparents  could  have  made  in  the  course 


Stock  Exchange  195 

of  a  whole  grubby  lifetime.  Hence,  sooner 
or  later,  his  patrimony,  or  few  hundred  of 
surplus  capital,  is  planked  into  the  ball  that 
rolls  cit3rwards,  on  the  off-chance  that  it  may 
come  back  arm  in  arm,  as  it  were,  with  thou- 
sands. 

Even  the  more  cautious  sort  of  English- 
man, who  looks  upon  speculation  with  a 
deprecating  eye  and  pins  his  faith  on  legiti- 
mate investment,  is  rapidly  descending  into 
the  gambling  habit.  Schemes  which  promise 
fat  dividends  inflame  his  imagination  and 
drag  him  out  of  the  even  tenor  of  his  way. 
He  is  perfectly  well  aware  that  fifteen, 
twenty,  and  twenty-five  per  cent,  in  return 
for  one's  money  is  quite  wrong  somehow. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  prospect  rav- 
ishes, and  there  are  concerns  in  the  world 
which  pay  such  dividends  year  by  year  with- 
out turning  a  hair.  Only  sometimes  there  is 
a  colossal  smash,  and  half  the  shopkeepers 
of  England  put  on  sackcloth  and  ashes  and 
get  up  funds  for  one  another's  relief.  To 
the  looker-on  the  whole    system  is  highly 


196      The  Egregious  English 

diverting;  to  the  players  in  the  game  the 
fun  will  never  be  obvious. 

The  real  truth  about  the  matter  is  simply 
this — the  standard  of  living  in  England  is  an 
inflated  and  artificial  standard.  Practically 
every  Englishman  lives,  or  longs  to  live,  be- 
yond his  means.  The  workman  and  the 
workman's  wife  must  put  on  the  style  of 
the  foreman  and  the  foreman's  wife,  and  the 
foreman  and  the  foreman's  wife  must  ap- 
pear to  be  nearly  as  comfortably  off  as  the 
manager,  the  manager  as  his  employer,  all 
employers,  shopkeepers,  factory  owners,  iron- 
masters, engineers,  printers,  and  even  pub- 
lishers as  prosperous  as  each  other,  and  so 
on  till  you  come  to  dukes,  than  whom,  of 
course,  nobody  can  be  more  prosperous.  It 
would  be  possible  to  bring  together  six  Eng- 
lishmen whose  incomes  ranged  from  £1  10s, 
a  week  to  £50,000  a  year,  and  whose  dress 
and  tastes  would  be  pretty  well  identical. 
Fifty  years  ago  the  sons  of  the  middle  classes 
had  really  no  inclination  toward  the  super- 
fluities.    The  dandy  was  rather  laughed  at 


Stock  Exchange  197 

among  them,  the  gourmet  was  a  monster 
they  never  by  any  chance  encountered,  and 
the  Hbertine  was  a  sad  warning  and  a  person 
to  be  eschewed.  Nowadays  it  is  all  the  other 
way:  the  gilt  and  tinsel  and  glamour  and 
rapidity  of  the  gay  world  have  captured  the 
English  understanding  and  brought  it  ex- 
ceeding low.  There  is  little  moral  backbone 
left  in  the  country.  Money,  money,  money, 
to  be  ill  gotten  and  ill  spent,  is  the  English 
ideal.  The  man  who  can  go  without  is  con- 
sidered a  crank  or  a  fool  or  worse,  or  he  is  set 
down  for  an  indolent  fellow  who  should  be 
given  a  month  or  two  on  the  treadmill  for 
luck.  The  whole  duty  of  man — of  English- 
men, that  is  to  say — is  to  have  money  in 
ponderable  quantities ;  the  man  without  it  is 
of  no  account  at  all.  Nobody  believes  in  him, 
nobody  wants  him,  nobody  tolerates  him. 
He  may  be  wise  and  witty  and  chaste  and 
blessed  with  all  the  virtues,  and  still  be  re- 
ceived with  great  coldness  by  bank  man- 
agers ;  and  it  is  well  known  that  the  attitude 
of  a   bank  manager  towards  a  man  is  the 


19^      The  Egregious  English 

attitude  of  society  at  large.  If  the  bank  man- 
ager beams  and  rubs  his  hands,  "God's  in 
His  heaven:  all's  right  with  the  world."  If 
the  bank  manager  frowns  and  sends  you  im- 
pertinent letters,  you  may  last  a  week  or  a 
fortnight  or  a  few  months,  but  you  are  on 
thin  ice,  and  you  must  please  take  care  not 
to  forget  it.  I  should  not  be  at  all  surprised 
if  the  omnipotent  official  whose  business  it  is 
to  discover  what  persons  are  or  are  not  quali- 
fied to  approach  our  British  fountain  of  hon- 
our were  one  day  found  to  be  a  bank  manager 
in  disguise. 

So  that,  on  the  whole,  the  Englishman  has 
every  inducement  to  get  rich  and  to  be  very 
quick  about  it.  His  dealings  with  the 
"Stock  Exchange" — that  is  to  say,  with  the 
City — are  but  the  natural  expression  of  his 
anxiety  to  oblige  all  parties  concerned.  It 
is  a  pity  that  getting  and  spending  should 
become  the  main  concerns  of  his  life ;  but,  as 
he  pathetically  puts  it,  "One  must  do  as 
Rome  does,  and  some  women  are  never  con- 
tent.' '     The  Stock  Exchange  is  the  only  way. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE    BELOVED 

What  is  more  beautiful  or  meet  to  be 
taken  to  the  bosom  than  the  Englishman? 
Everybody  loves  him ;  his  goings  to  and  fro 
upon  the  earth  are  as  the  progresses  of  one 
who  has  done  all  men  good.  He  drops  fat- 
ness and  blessings  as  he  walks.  He  smiles 
benignity  and  graciousness  and  "  I-am-glad- 
to-see-you-all-looking-so-well."  And  before 
him  runs  one  in  plush,  crying,  "Who  is  the 
most  popular  man  of  this  footstool?"  And 
all  the  people  shall  rejoice  and  say,  "The 
Englishman — God  bless  him!" 

Hence  it  comes  to  pass  that  in  whatever 

part  of  the  world  the  Englishman  may  find 

himself,  he  has  a  feeling  that  he  is  thoroughly 

at  home.     "I  am  as  welcome  as  flowers  in 

199 


200      The  Egregious  English 

May,'*  he  says.  ''These  pore  foreigners, 
these  pore  'eathen  are  glad  to  see  me.  They 
never  have  any  money,  pore  devils !  and  were 
it  not  for  our  whirring  spindles  at  home,  I 
verily  believe  they  would  have  nothing  to 
wear/'  In  brief,  the  Englishman  abroad  is 
always  in  a  sort  of  Father  Christmassey, 
Santa  Claus  frame  of  mind.  He  eats  well, 
he  drinks  well,  and  he  sleeps  well.  He  calls 
for  the  best,  and  he  pays  for  it.  It  is  a  won- 
derful thing  to  do,  and  it  goes  straight  to  the 
hearts  of  the  *'  pore  foreigner  "  and  the  "  pore 
'eathen."  This,  at  any  rate,  is  the  English- 
man's own  view.  It  is  a  pleasing,  consoling, 
and  stimulating  view,  and  it  would  ill  be- 
come an  unregenerate  outsider  rudely  to  dis- 
turb it.  Indeed,  I  question  whether  the 
Englishman  in  his  blindness  and  adipose  con- 
ceit would  allow  you  to  disturb  it. 

When  persons  in  France  say,  ''A  bas 
r Anglais,''  your  fat  Englishman  smiles,  and 
says,  "  Little  boys ! "  When  people  put  rude 
pictures  of  him  on  German  postcards,  he 
smiles  again,  and  says  that  the  flowing  tide 


The  Beloved  201 

of  public  opinion  in  Germany  is  entirely  with 
him.  When  Dutch  farmers  propose  to  throw 
him  into  the  sea,  he  becomes  very  red  in  the 
neck,  splutters  somewhat,  and  says,  ''I'm 
sure  they  will  make  excellent  subjects  in 
time."  And  when  the  savage  Americans  de- 
sire to  chaw  him  up  and  swallow  him,  he 
says, ' '  You  astonish  me.  I  have  always  been 
under  the  impression  that  blood  was  thicker 
than  water."  His  desire  is  to  live  at  peace 
with  all  men;  but  his  notion  of  peace  is  to 
have  his  hand  in  both  your  pockets  and  no 
questions  asked.  He  owns  two-thirds  of  the 
habitable  globe  (vide  the  geography  books), 
and  every  pint  of  sea  is  his  (pace  the  popular 
song) ;  he  owns  also  everything  that  is  worth 
owning.  He  is  the  Pierpont  Morgan  of  the 
universe.     Who  could  help  loving  him? 

On  the  other  hand,  the  excellent  J.  B.  has 
not  escaped  calumny.  If  I  were  disposed  to 
reproduce  some  of  the  slanders  upon  him,  it 
goes  without  saying  that  they  would  make 
a  rather  large  chapter.  All  manner  of  for- 
eign writers  have  time  and  time  again  had  a 


202      The  Egregious  English 

fling  at  the  Englishman.  They  love  him,  but 
their  love  is  not  blind.  They  perceive  that 
he  has  faults  of  a  grievous  nature,  and  they 
write  accordingly.  Curiously  enough,  too, 
quite  severe  criticisms  of  John  Bull  have  been 
written  in  his  own  household.  Mr.  Wilfrid 
Scawen  Blunt,  for  example,  who  is  an  Eng- 
lishman, and  apparently  innocent  of  Celtic 
taint,  actually  goes  so  far  as  to  call  the  Eng- 
lishman an  Anglo-Norman  dog: 

Down  to  the  latest  bom,  the  hungriest  of  the  pack, 
The  master- wolf  of  all  men,  called  the  Sassenach, 
The  Anglo- Norman  dog,  who  goeth  by  land  and  sea, 
As  his  forefathers  went  in  chartered  piracy, 
Death,  fire  in  his  right  hand. 

And  the  English  poet  goes  on  to  elaborate 
his  indictment  against  the  Englishman,  thus : 

He  hath  outlived  the  day 
Of  the  old  single  graspings,  where  each  went  his  way 
Alone  to  plunder  all.     He  hath  learned  to  curb  his  lusts 
Somewhat,  to  smooth  his  brawls,  to  guide  his  passion- 
ate gusts, 
His  cry  of  "Mine,  mine,  mine!"  in  inarticulate  wrath. 
He  dareth  not  make  raid  on  goods  his  next  friend  hath 
With  open  violence,  nor  loose  his  hand  to  steal, 
Save  in  community  and  for  the  common  weal 


The  Beloved  203 

'Twixt  Saxon  man  and  man.     He  is  more  congruous 

grown; 
Holding  a  subtler  plan  to  make  the  world  his  own 
By  organized  self-seeking  in  the  paths  of  power 
He  is  new-drilled  to  wait.     He  knoweth  his  appointed 

hour 
And  his  appointed  prey.     Of  all  he  maketh  tool, 
Even  of  his  own  sad  virtues,  to  cajole  and  rule. 


We  are  told,  further,  that  the  Beloved  has 
tarred  Time's  features,  pock-marked  Nat- 
ure's face,  and  ''brought  all  to  the  same 
Jakes,"  whatever  that  may  mean.     Also: 

There  is  no  sentient  thing 
PoUuteth  and  defileth  as  this  Saxon  king, 
This  intellectual  lord  and  sage  of  the  new  quest. 
The  only  wanton  he  that  fouleth  his  own  nest, 
And  still  his  boast  goeth  forth. 

This  is  an  English  opinion,  and,  conse- 
quently, worth  the  money.  Mr.  Blimt  as- 
sures us  that  in  putting  it  forth  he  has  the 
approval  of  no  less  a  philosopher  than  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer,  and  no  less  an  idealist  than 
Mr.  George  Frederick  Watts.  ''I  have  not," 
says  Mr.  Blunt,  "shrunk  from  insisting  on 
the  truth  that  the  hypocrisy  and  all-acquir- 
ing greed  of  modem  England  is  an  atrocious 


204      The  Egregious  English 

spectacle — one  which,  if  there  be  any  justice 
in  Heaven,  must  bring  a  curse  from  God,  as 
it  has  surely  already  made  the  angels  weep. 
The  destruction  of  beauty  in  the  name  of 
science,  the  destruction  of  happiness  in  the 
name  of  progress,  the  destruction  of  rever- 
ence in  the  name  of  religion,  these  are  the 
Pharisaic  crimes  of  all  the  white  races;  but 
there  is  something  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  impiety 
crueller  still :  that  it  also  destroys,  as  no  other 
race  does,  for  its  mere  vainglorious  pleasure. 
The  Anglo-Saxon  alone  has  in  our  day  exter- 
minated, root  and  branch,  whole  tribes  of 
mankind.  He  alone  has  depopulated  con- 
tinents, species  after  species,  of  their  wonder- 
ful animal  life,  and  is  still  yearly  destroying ; 
and  this  not  merely  to  occupy  the  land,  for  it 
lies  in  large  part  empty,  but  for  his  insati- 
able lust  of  violent  adventure,  to  make  record 
bags  and  kill." 

When  the  Beloved  comes  across  reading  of 
this  sort  he  no  doubt  sheds  bitter  tears,  and 
remembers  how  sharper  than  a  serpent's 
tooth  it  is  to  have  a  thankless  child.     And 


The  Beloved  205 

he  goes  on  his  way  rejoicing,  unimpressed  and 
unreformed. 

The  fact  of  the  matter  is,  that  from  the 
beginning,  John  Bull,  though  possessed  of  a 
great  reputation  for  honesty  and  munifi- 
cence, has  never  really  been  any  better  than 
he  should  be.  When  he  interfered  between 
tyrant  and  slave,  when  he  went  forth  to  con- 
quer savage  persons  and  to  annex  savage 
lands  which  somehow  invariably  flowed  with 
milk  and  honey,  he  made  a  point  of  doing 
it  with  the  air  of  a  philanthropist,  and  for 
centuries  the  world  took  him  at  his  own  esti- 
mate. Even  in  the  late  war  the  great  cry 
was  that  he  did  not  want  gold-mines.  As  a 
general  rule  he  never  wants  anything;  but 
he  always  gets  it.  It  is  only  of  late  that  the 
world  has  begun  to  find  him  out  and  that  he 
himself  has  begun  to  have  qualms.  He  feels 
in  his  bones  that  something  has  gone  wrong 
with  him.  It  may  be  a  slight  matter  and 
not  beyond  repair,  but  there  it  is.  He  can- 
not put  his  hand  on  his  heart  and  say ;  ''  I  am 
the  fine,  substantial,  sturdy,  truth-speaking. 


2o6       The  Egregious  English 

incorruptible,  magnanimous,  genial  English- 
man of  half  a  century  ago!"  The  fly  has 
crept  into  the  ointment  of  his  virtue, 
and  the  fragrance  of  it  no  longer  remains. 
His  attitude  at  the  present  moment  is 
the  attitude  of  the  anxious  man  who  per- 
ceives that  life  is  a  little  too  much  for  him, 
and  keeps  on  saying,  "We  shall  have  to 
buck  up!" 

He  is  in  two  minds  about  most  things  over 
which  he  was  once  cock-sure.  He  could  not 
quite  tell  you,  for  example,  whether  he  con- 
tinues to  stand  at  the  head  of  the  world's 
commerce  or  not.  Once  there  was  no  doubt 
about  it ;  now — well,  it  is  a  question  of  sta- 
tistics, and  you  can  prove  anything  by  statis- 
tics. Out  of  America  men  have  come  to  buy 
English  things  which  were  deemed  unpur- 
chasable.  The  American  has  come  and  seen 
and  purchased  and  done  it  quite  quickly. 
The  Englishman  is  a  little  puzzled ;  his  slow 
wits  cannot  altogether  grasp  the  situation. 
"We  must  buck  up!"  he  says,  "and  take 
measures  while  there  is  yet  time."     He  does 


The  Beloved  207 

not  see  that  the  newer  order  is  upon  him,  and 
that  inevitably  and  for  his  good  he  must  be 
considerably  shaken  up.  His  own  day  has 
been  a  lengthy,  a  roseful,  and  a  gaudy  one; 
it  has  been  a  day  of  ease  and  triumph  and 
comfortable  going,  and  the  Beloved  has  be- 
come very  wealthy  and  a  trifle  stout  in  conse- 
quence. Whether  to-morrow  is  going  to  be 
his  day,  too,  and  whether  it  is  going  to 
be  one  of  those  nice  loafing,  sunshiny  kind 
of  days  that  the  Beloved  likes,  are  open 
questions.  It  is  to  be  hoped  devoutly 
that  fate  will  be  kind  to  him:  he  needs  the 
sympathy  of  all  who  are  about  him;  he 
wants  encouragement  and  support  and  a 
restful  time. 

It  is  said  that  his  Majesty  of  Portugal, 
who  has  just  left  these  shores,  on  being  asked 
what  had  impressed  him  most  during  his 
visit,  replied,  ''The  roast  beef."  ''Nothing 
else,  sir  ? "  inquired  his  interlocutor.  ' '  Yes, ' ' 
said  the  monarch;  "the  boiled  beef."  And 
there  is  a  great  deal  in  it.  Through  much 
devouring  of  beef  the  English  have  undoubt- 


2o8       The  Egregious  English 

edly  waxed  a  trifle  beefy.  It  is  their  beefi- 
ness  and  suetiness — ^that  fatty  degeneration, 
in  fact — which  impress  you. 

Recognising  his  need  of  props  and  stays 
and  abdominal  belts,  as  it  were,  the  Beloved 
has  latterly  taken  to  remembering  the  Col- 
onies. He  is  now  of  opinion  that  he  and  his 
sturdy  children  over-seas  should  be  "knit 
together  in  bonds  of  closer  unity,"  *'to  pre- 
sent an  unbroken  front  to  the  world," 
"should  share  the  burdens  and  glories  of 
Empire,"  and  so  on  and  so  forth.  The  Col- 
onies— good  bodies ! — saw  it  all  at  once.  They 
had  been  accustomed  to  be  snubbed  and 
neglected  and  left  out  of  count,  and  they  had 
forgotten  to  whom  they  belonged.  In  his 
hour  of  need  the  Beloved  cried,  *"Elp!  I 
said  I  did  n*t  want  you,  but  I  do — I  do!" 
and  the  Colonies  sent  to  his  aid,  at  a  dollar 
a  day  per  head,  the  prettiest  lot  of  free- 
booters and  undesirable  characters  they 
found  themselves  able  to  muster.  Later, 
they  sent  several  landau  loads  of  premiers 
and  politicians,  who  were  fed  and  flattered 


The  Beloved  209 

to  their  hearts'  content,  and  went  home,  no 
doubt,  greatly  impressed  with  the  English 
roast  and  boiled  beef.  These  gentlemen 
made  speeches  in  return  for  their  dinners; 
they  were  allowed  to  visit  the  Colonial  Office 
and  kiss  the  hand  of  Mr.  Chamberlain ;  they 
saw  Peter  Robinson's  and  the  tuppenny  tube : 
and  the  bonds  of  Empire  have  been  knit 
closer  ever  since. 

Not  to  put  too  fine  a  point  upon  it,  the 
Englishman's  attempt  to  buttress  himself  up 
out  of  the  Colonies  has  proved  a  ghastly  fail- 
ure. The  scheme  fell  flat.  The  English  may 
want  the  Colonies,  but  the  Colonies  do  not 
want  the  English — at  any  rate,  on  bonds  of 
unity  lines.  The  banner  of  Imperialism 
which  has  waved  so  gloriously  during  the 
past  lustrum  will  have  to  be  furled  and  put 
away.  The  great  Imperial  idea  declines  to 
work;  it  has  been  brought  on  the  political 
stage  half  a  century  too  late.  At  best  it  was 
a  fetch,  and  it  has  failed.  The  All-Beloved 
will  have  to  find  some  other  way  out. 
Whether  he  is  quite  equal  to  the  task  may 

"4 


2IO       The  Egregious  English 

be  reckoned  another  question.  One  sup- 
poses that  he  will  try ;  for  there  is  life  in  the 
old  dog  yet,  at  any  rate,  according  to  the  old 
dog. 

THE  END 


The  UNSPEAKABLE 
SCOT 

By  T.  ^W.  H.  CROSLAND 

12^    {By  mail,  $1.35)    Net,  $1.25 


"  Surely  to  be  so  loudly  damned  is  not  to  be  faintly 
praised.  Just  think  of  the  solid  amount  of  flattery  that 
is  contained  in  sixteen  full  chapters  of  seething  de- 
nunciation !  " — Philadelphia  Item. 


"From  first  to  last  he  wants  you  to  understand  and  is 
ready  to  prove  to  you,  to  his  own  satisfaction  at  least, 
that  a  Scotchman  is  the  most  loathsome  Yahoo  that  ever 
blotted  the  earth's  surface  ;  and  that  no  man  was  ever 
born  north  of  the  Tweed  who  was  not  an  arrant  knave 
and  unctuous  hypocrite." — The  Bookman. 


"The  'canny  Scot*  who  reads  the  book  will  only 
smile  a  grim  smile  and  thank  God  that  to  an  English- 
man he  is  'unspeakable.' " — Minneapolis  Journal. 


"Robert  Burns  is  singled  out  for  an  especial  attack— 
and  the  criticism  of  him  is  none  the  less  enjoyable 
because  he  has  been  so  exalted  beyond  all  serious 
deserts." — Chicago  News. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
New  York  London 


By  R.  DE  MAULDE  LA  CLAVIERE 


WOMEN  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE 

A   Study   of   Feminism.      Translated   by   George 
Herbert  Ely.     8°.     With  portrait  .   net,  $3.50 

*'  We  have  only  admiration  to  bestow  upon  this  most  intri- 
cate and  masterly  analysis  of  the  great  feminine  revolution  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  .  .  .  There  are  chapters  that  we  find 
ourselves  wishing  everybody  might  read  ;  the  admirable  essay, 
for  instance,  on  the  '  Embroidery  of  Life,*  and  that  other 
chapter  discussing  the  influence  of  Platonism.  .  .  ." — Athen- 
aunty  London. 

"  Everything  is  so  brightly,  so  captivatingly  important  in 
this  volume,  the  search  into  the  past  has  been  so  well  re- 
warded, the  conclusions  are  so  shrewd  and  clever,  the  subject 
is  so  limitless,  yet  curiously  limited,  that  as  history  or  as  psy- 
chology it  should  gain  a  large  public." — Bookman. 

THE  ART  OF  LIFE 

Translated  by   George   Herbert   Ely.     8**. 

(By  mail,  $1.85)     ....     net,  $1.75 

There  is  no  one  to  whom  Buffon's  phrase,  Le  style  c^est 
Vhomme  mime,  may  be  more  justly  applied  than  to  M.  de 
Maulde.  His  work  is  absolutely  himself  ;  it  derives  from  his 
original  personality  and  his  wide  and  sure  learning  an  histori- 
cal value  and  a  literary  charm  almost  unique.  He  is  a  wit 
with  the  curiosity  and  patience  of  the  scholar,  and  a  scholar 
with  the  temperament  of  the  artist.  The  sparkle  and  humour 
of  his  conversation  are  crystallised  in  his  letters,  the  charming 
expression  of  a  large  and  generous  nature. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
New  York  London 


GOOD    FICTION 


The  House  Opposite 

A  Mystery.       By    Elizabeth   Kknt.       i2mo,    cloth,    ntt^ 
$i.oo;  i6ino,  paper,  socts. 

There  are  few  readers  who  will  not  confess  to  a  delight  in  a 
well-constructed  detective  story.  This  tale  should  take  rank 
among  the  first.  It  tells  of  a  mysterious  occurrence  in  a 
fashionable  apartment  house  in  Madison  Avenue,  New  York, 
and  the  tracing  of  the  causes  of  that  occurrence  through  the 
chapters  of  the  book  forms  a  narrative  of  thrilling  interest. 


The  Sheep-Stealers 

A  Romance  of  the  West  of  England.  By  Violet  Jacob. 
i2mo,  net,  $1.20.  By  mail,  $1.35. 
A  novel  with  a  hint  of  Thomas  Hardy  about  it, — a  story  of 
Devon,  and  told  in  a  manner  that  will  surely  draw  wide  atten- 
tion to  Mrs.  Jacob  as  a  new  and  notable  contributor  to  real 
literature. 


The  Poet  and  Penelope 

By  L.  Parry  Truscott.  i2mo  (By  mail,  $1.10),  tut,  |i.oo. 
"  The  book  is  delightful  from  first  to  last.  Mr.  Truscott 
tells  his  story  daintily  and  lightly  ;  but  he  is  not  merely  a 
writer  of  graceful  comedy.  He  understands  men  and  women. 
Each  one  of  his  characters  is  a  personage  in  his  or  her  way, 
and  there  is  a  subtlety  in  the  drawing  of  the  hero  and  the 
heroine  that  gives  the  story  reality." — London  World. 


New  York— G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS —London 


The   Romance  of 
Leonardo  da  Vinci 


By 


The 
Forerunner 

(The  Resurrection 
of  the  Gods) 


DMITRI  MEREJKOWSKI 

Author  of  "The  Death  of  the  Gods,"  "Tolstoi  as  Man  and  Artist,"  etc. 


12°.  $1.50. 

"A  novel  of  very  remarkable  interest  and  power.  Most 
vivid  and  picturesque." — Guardian. 

' '  A  finer  study  of  the  artistic  temperament  at  its  best  could 
scarcely  be  found.  And  Leonardo  is  the  centre  of  a  crowd  of 
striking  figures.  It  is  impossible  to  speak  too  highly  of  the 
dramatic  power  with  which  they  are  presented,  both  singly 
and  in  combination.  A  very  powerful  piece  of  work,  stand- 
ing higher  above  the  level  of  contemporary  fiction  than  it 
would  be  easy  to  say." — Spectator, 

*'  A  remarkable  work." — Morning  Post. 

"  Takes  the  reader  by  assault.     One  feels  the  impulsion  of 


vivid  personality  at  the  back  of  it  all." — Academy. 


'*  It  amazes,  while  it  wholly  charms,  by  the  power  of 
imagery,  the  glowing  fancy,  the  earnestness  and  enthusiasm 
with  which  the  writer  conjures  Italy  of  the  Renaissance  from 
the  past  into  the  living  light." — London  World. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

New  York  London 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST 
STAMPED  BELOW 

AN     INITIAL     FINE     OF     25     CENTS 

OVERDUE. 


MAR  24  1933 


LD  21-50m-l,'3: 


<      '  ^an 


595 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  UBRARY 


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